DECEMBER 5th

On this date in:
1776	The first scholastic fraternity in America, Phi Beta Kappa, was organized at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
1782	Martin Van Buren, the eighth U.S. president and the first to be born after the country was formed, was born in Kinderhook, N.Y.
1791	Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at age 35.
1792	George Washington was re-elected president and John Adams was re-elected vice president.
1831	Former President John Quincy Adams took his seat as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
1848	President James K. Polk triggered the Gold Rush of '49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.
1901	Movie producer Walt Disney was born in Chicago.
1955	The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO.
1994	Republicans chose Newt Gingrich to be the first GOP speaker of the House in four decades.
1996	Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan questioned whether the stock market was overvalued, saying in a speech in Washington, "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly inflated asset values?"
2002	Senate Republican leader Trent Lott praised Strom Thurmond's pro-segregation 1948 presidential campaign. The ensuing uproar led to Lott's resignation from the Senate leadership.
2006	New York became the first city in the nation to ban artery-clogging trans fats at restaurants.
2007	A teenage gunman went on a shooting rampage at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., killing six store employees and two customers; Robert A. Hawkins, 19, then took his own life.

Article of the day

Aircraft squadron lost in the Bermuda Triangle

At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.

Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel.

By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.

The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.

Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the "Lost Squadron" helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.

Today Birthdays

Cliff Floyd turns 36 years old today.

AP Photo/Steve Nesius Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Cliff Floyd turns 36 years old today.

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