What
a weird name for a holiday! I had no idea what this was about and had
to look it up. It turns out that a guy named Douglas Corrigan got a
pretty special nickname: Wrong Way Corrigan. Here's his story:
On
this date in 1938, Corrigan got into his 1929 Curtiss Robin monoplane
in an airfield in Brooklyn, New York. He'd let people know his flight
plan; he was going to fly westward to Los Angeles, California. But
when he took he, he swung the plane eastward and headed out over the
Atlantic Ocean. About 3,000 miles later—more than 28 hours
later!—Corrigan landed in Dublin, Ireland. He had made the nonstop
solo flight without radio or special navigation equipment—totally
against American and Irish flight regulations. He said he made the
mistake because he'd accidentally followed the wrong end of his
compass needle, but I would think that he would have noticed he was
flying over an ocean rather than land!
Still, Corrigan got a hero's welcome for his feat, and the nickname!
And
now he has a day named after him. Does that mean that a really big
mistake is a stroke of genius?
(No.
No, it does not. At least, not very often, it doesn't!)
Also
on this date:
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