MIKE GRACIA

In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F.
Kennedy announces on October 22, 1962 that U.S. spy planes 
discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sites—
under construction but nearing completion—housed medium-
range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in
the United States, including Washington, D.C.

Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval “quarantine”
of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more
offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United
States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites
currently in place. The president made it clear that America
would not stop short of military action to end what he called a “clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace.”

In the summer of 1977, members of the rock band Aerosmith
inspected an airplane they were considering chartering for
their upcoming tour—a Convair 240 (above) operated out of
Addison, Texas. Concerns over the flight crew led Aerosmith
to look elsewhere. a decision that saved one band but doomed
another. The aircraft in question was instead chartered by the
band Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were just setting out that autumn
on a national tour that promised to be their biggest to date.

On October 20, 1977, however, during a flight from Greenville,
South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s
tour plane crashed in a heavily wooded area of southwestern 
Mississippi during a failed emergency landing attempt, killing
band-members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie
Gaines as well as the band’s assistant road manager and the
plane’s pilot and co-pilot. Twenty others survived the crash.

Robert Edward Crane (July 13, 1928 – June 29, 1978)

(AP) – Rudolph Isley, a founding member of the Isley Brothers
who helped perform such raw rhythm and blues classics as
“Shout" and “Twist and Shout” and the funky hits “That Lady”
and “It’s Your Thing,” has died at age 84.

There are no words to express my feelings and the love I have
for my brother. Our family will miss him. But I know he’s in a
better place," Ronald Isley said in a statement released
Thursday by an Isley Brothers publicist. Further details
were not immediately available.

A Cincinnati native, Rudolph Isley began singing in church with
brothers Ronald and O’Kelly (another sibling, Vernon, died at
age 13) and was still in his teens when they broke through in
the late 1950s with “Shout,” a secularized gospel rave that was
later immortalized during the toga party scene in “Animal House.”

John Denver (Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.)
(December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997)

To those who bought records like “Rocky Mountain High”
and “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by the millions in
the 1970s, John Denver was much more than just a great
songwriter and performer.

There never was and there probably never will be a star
quite like John Denver, who died on October 12, 1997
when his experimental amateur aircraft (below) crashed
into Monterey Bay on the California coast.

Quote from the NTSB Report: "The National Transportation Safety
Board determined the probable cause of the accident was the
pilot’s diversion of attention from the operation of the airplane
and his inadvertent application of right rudder that resulted in
the loss of airplane control while attempting to manipulate the
fuel selector handle.