Good Monday morning.
Anyone who knows me even moderately well, including frequenters of this space, knows that I am afraid to fly.
Not just afraid, actually, but abjectly terrified. And this is the sort of fear that familiarity cannot improve. In fact, the more I fly, the more I hate doing it, and the more afraid I get with each experience.
So, I simply cannot understand people who love flying, which happens to include my spouse. He even took flying lessons at one point. He’s the sort of person who, when they get interested in a topic, really grooves on understanding the science of the thing.
Nevertheless, no matter how many times he tries to explain to me the science of turbulence – Babe! It’s like bumps in the road! – it cannot eradicate the irrational horror that stories like this one, coupled with my own unpleasantly bumpy experiences, generate.
My own preference for remaining with my feet firmly planted on the ground does not obscure my admiration for people who love soaring to great heights – even as I can’t fathom what about the experience appeals to them. On this day in 1897, a women whose name became synonymous with flying – and whose mysterious disappearance was never truly solved – was born.
I’m speaking, of course, of none other than Amelia Earhart, the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
You’re probably familiar with the basics of Earhart’s story. She as born in Kansas and discovered her love of flying while volunteering during WWI – she was helping treat wounded Canadian soldiers returning from Europe and the pilots’ practice fields were nearby.
She took her first flight in 1920 and just three years later received her pilot’s license, joining an elite group of just 16 women in the world. (Remember, this was only about 17 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, so flying was VERY new and, like much else at the time, very male dominated).
In 1931, Earhart became the first president of an organization of female pilots called the Ninety-Nines, which still exists to this day and set about changing opinions regarding what women could – and should – be doing. Her solo Atlantic Ocean flight took place in 1932 – just one of five speed and distance women’s flight records she set between 1930 and 1935.
Earhart did not limit her activism to the realm of flight. She was also active in politics through her affiliation with the National Woman’s Party and early support of the Equal Rights Amendment. She had a rather unconventional marriage to her public relations manager, George Putnam. She worried the union would derail her career, and insisted on keeping her name.
Earhart had a close friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, who whom she shared a passion for women’s rights. She even once accompanied the First Lady on a short flight from D.C. to Baltimore and back, during which Earhart briefly took the captain’s chair and Roosevelt reportedly wore a white silk gown and kid gloves.
During an attempt at becoming the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean, just three weeks before she was to celebrate her 40th birthday. They were last seen in New Guinea, on July 2, 1937.
The U.S. government mounted a massive search for the duo, but not a trace of them – or their plane – was found. The search was officially called off on July 18, though Putnam continued to pay for a private search through October.
Finally, in 1939, Earhart and Noonan were declared legally dead.
Years later, there is some speculation that she died on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro, an atoll about 1,800 miles away from Hawaii, and that her body was devoured by giant and incredibly creepy-looking crabs.
Still don’t believe me? Click here, here, and here. This is one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” stories for sure.
We’ll get a bit of an extended version of the fabulous weekend weather this morning – arguably good flying weather – with sunny skies and temperatures climbing into the mid-80s. But things will take a decided downturn in the afternoon, with scattered showers and thunderstorms developing, the latter bringing with them the possibility of gusty winds and hail.
In the headlines…
Within a matter of months, or even weeks, President Joe Biden could find himself dealing with multiple major workers’ strikes that threaten to rock the economy ahead of the presidential election.
Biden is making a last-ditch effort to urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reconsider a vote on a reform of Israel’s judicial branch.
Biden’s comments came amid reports of progress in 11th-hour negotiations between the ruling bloc and opposition leaders to strike a compromise regarding the “reasonableness” bill set to come to a vote today.
Tens of thousands of Israelis marched up to Jerusalem to protest the far-right government’s plan to limit judicial power, driven by a fear that the government is trying to steal the country that their parents and grandparents fought to build against the odds.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to be back in Parliament today, a day after he had an emergency procedure to implant a heart pacemaker. His far-right and religiously conservative ruling coalition holds a four-seat majority in Parliament.
Biden tomorrow will create a national monument in honor of Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago whose 1955 kidnapping and murder in Mississippi was a defining spark in the emerging civil-rights movement, a White House official said.
Biden will sign a proclamation approving the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. The date marks the 82nd anniversary of Till’s birth.
Biden said that new commitments by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and others leading the development of AI technology to meet safeguards brokered by his White House are an important step toward managing its “enormous” promise and risks.
The companies will commit to allowing outside security testing of their products, share data about managing AI risks with governments, civil society, and academia, and create a way to acknowledge AI-created content with a digital watermark.
Donald Trump has a commanding lead in Republican primary polls, but right-leaning independent voters worry if he’s the GOP presidential pick, he’ll lose again to Biden, according to an analysis of swing voters conducted for a pro-Ron DeSantis PAC.
DeSantis’ advisers are promising to reorient his candidacy as an “insurgent” run and remake it into a “leaner-meaner” operation.
Biden’s family story has long been one of his greatest strengths politically. Republicans are starting to think they can turn it into a liability.
Democratic primary rival Robert Kennedy Jr. says he backs a probe of the $10 million bribery claim leveled against Biden and his son by an Ukrainian oligarch who headed the “notoriously corrupt” Burisma energy company.
For all their complexity, the Trump-related prosecutions have not significantly constrained the ability of prosecutors to carry out their regular duties, officials have said.
Michael D. Cohen, the longtime fixer to Trump, who was set to go to trial next week against his former boss’s company in a dispute over legal fees, has agreed to settle his lawsuit with the Trump Organization, lawyers for both parties said.
Water heaters could soon be subject to much more stringent efficiency requirements if a recent Department of Energy proposal that has been criticized by Republican lawmakers goes into effect.
Biden approved a “major disaster declaration” for several New York counties that will unlock significant resources to help the regions recover from devastating floods earlier this month, political leaders for the state said Saturday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office says the declaration will provide critical funding for local governments inClinton, Dutchess, Essex, Hamilton, Ontario, Orange, Putnam, and Rockland Counties.
Hochul’s administration is going to bat for the “world’s oldest profession” by launching a free health care program for sex workers — a move critics are slamming as encouraging a campaign to decriminalize prostitution.
Hochul announced Friday that Anthony Hogrebe will become her administration’s next communications director. Hogrebe replaces Julie Wood, who is departing from the post this month.
New York state is sending $20 million in grant money to eligible counties in order to strengthen emergency communications systems, Hochul said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Hochul attended the official groundbreaking of the $2.25 billion Interstate 81 Viaduct Project in Syracuse, formally launching one of the largest and most ambitious construction projects ever undertaken by the state.
A federal magistrate judge has rejected a request by Andrew Cuomo to compel the AG’s office and the state Assembly Judiciary Committee to turn over their records from extensive sexual harassment investigations of the former governor.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl ruled that both AG Letitia James and the Assembly’s judiciary committee had reason to avoid handing over a bevy of interview memos and unpublished documents related to their separate investigations into Cuomo.
A pair of GOP state lawmakers are pushing to ban public pot puffing in a long shot effort to clear the air of “pungent” clouds of funky smoke.
Buffalo Sen. George Borrello and Brooklyn Assembly by Michael Novakhov want to prohibit public use of marijuana in all forms “unless specifically authorized by the locality.”
Amid New York’s ongoing migrant crisis, state officials recently awarded a nearly $800 million contract to two Texas-based companies in order to secure temporary sheltering services.
Mayor Eric Adams kicked off his new live radio show yesterday, saying on-air that he wanted to use the call-in program to talk directly to residents as just “an ordinary cat” who runs the city.
The show on WBLS 107.5 FM will air semi-regularly and feature news of the day, along with special guests and live call-ins from New Yorkers, according to a news release from the mayor’s office.
A stabbing suspect locked up on Rikers Island died in his cell early yesterday morning, marking the seventh death at the notorious jail complex this year and the 26th in New York City jails since Adams took office.
Adams wants more New Yorkers to have an eye in the sky by announcing new guidelines loosening restrictions for flying drones across the five boroughs.
New Jersey is suing the federal government to halt a congestion pricing program that will charge drivers to enter Midtown Manhattan, citing concerns that the tolling program will place unfair financial and environmental burdens on the state’s residents.
Staten Island is gearing up to join New Jersey in its legal fight to block the nation’s first congestion pricing toll system from coming to Manhattan.
Ex-Gov. David Paterson hit the brakes on the nation’s first congestion pricing toll system headed for Manhattan — claiming business hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID pandemic and current traffic doesn’t warrant it.
A group of “disorderly” migrants hurled objects at passersby in Manhattan before beating up two men who tried to intervene — pushing one of them through a glass door of an apartment building entrance, according to police and witnesses.
As word spread of a new city policy that will limit shelter stays to 60 days at a time for adult male migrants, asylum seekers are angry and worried about ending up in the streets.
Less than a day after cops and Sanitation workers cleared out a makeshift migrant tent city under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, even more, returned to live there.
Noisy dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles are roaring through Van Cortlandt Park’s paved paths and dirt trails this summer, despite a citywide crackdown that has taken more than 1,500 of the vehicles off the streets.
Depending on whom you talk to among his fellow cops, newly minted NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry is one of the department’s brightest lights — or a case of cronyism run amok.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh wants to create a “disciplinary matrix” that will clarify punishments for different offenses within the department as well as “communicate both reporting responsibilities and disciplinary outcomes to members of service.”
Progressive Council Democrats are pushing to legalize jaywalking– a move critics ripped as yet another step in the wrong direction for the crime-plagued Big Apple.
“New York, New York,” a big-budget musical that tried to position itself as a nostalgic love letter to the city, will close on July 30 after underwhelming critics and failing to find a sufficient audience to sustain a Broadway run.
Two new lawsuits filed by the families of the Buffalo supermarket massacre victims are the most recent attempt to hold social media companies responsible when men steeped in violent ideologies on those platforms open fire.
A high-ranking State Police staff inspector has been suspended after being charged with driving while intoxicated and criminal possession of prescription medication in an incident where he allegedly drove into a mailbox in Fulton County and kept going.
Since their last election in 2019, Albany County Executive Dan McCoy and Sheriff Craig Apple have continued to raise significant amounts of campaign funds without a clear opponent to challenge either of them in their re-election bids this coming fall.
After 183 asylum-seekers were placed at the Super 8 motel in Rotterdam earlier this week, the Schenectady County Sheriff’s Office said it will assist Rotterdam police in responding to any “challenges created” by their relocation.
County legislators are expected to call for an emergency order prohibiting the acceptance and housing of more asylum-seekers at a meeting tonight, as well as discuss how to deal with the placement of the migrants.
The City of Albany’s Democratic mayoral primary to decide the likely successor to Mayor Kathy Sheehan is 23 months away but potential candidates are already positioning themselves for a run.
A man who called in the bomb threat that shut down the conclusion of a three-act July 8 show at Saratoga Performing Arts Center complained about rock music promoting homosexuality and drug use, according to audio of his exchange with a police dispatcher.
Plans filed with the Saratoga Springs Zoning Board of Appeals show Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy would like to demolish the 1,500-square-foot home he bought earlier this year and replace it with a new four bedroom house.
Greta Gerwig’s gender wars “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s nuclear war “Oppenheimer” blew past already-stratospheric prerelease expectations at the weekend box office to collect a combined $235.5 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Tony Bennett’s wife Susan Benedetto is paying tribute to her late husband, following his death at age 96 on Friday.
Aug. 3 would become Tony Bennett Day across the U.S. under a resolution set to be introduced in Congress, Schumer said two days after the death of the beloved Queens-born singer.
Elon Musk said he plans to change Twitter’s logo to a simple letter, “X,” possibly as soon as today.
