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.

Removing Debris at the State Capitol in Salem, Oregon.

The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 (also known as the Big Blow)
was a Pacific Northwest windstorm that originated from typhoon
Freda and struck the West Coast of Canada and the Pacific
Northwest coast of the United States on October 12, 1962.

The system brought strong winds to the Pacific Northwest and southwest Canada. It was linked to 46 fatalities in the northwest
and Northern California resulting from heavy rains and mudslides. 

Estimates put the dollar damage at approximately $230 million to
$280 million for California, Oregon, and Washington combined.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. (now MetLife) named the
Columbus Day Storm the nation’s worst natural disaster of
1962.

On October 6, 1926, Yankee slugger Babe Ruth hit a record
three homers against the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth
game of the World Series. The Yanks won the game 10-5,
but despite Ruth’s unprecedented performance, they lost
the championship in the seventh game. In 1928, in the fourth
game of another Yanks-Cards World Series, Ruth tied his
own record, knocking three more pitches out of the same
park.

At the end of a sensational trial, former football star O.J. Simpson
was acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged
wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

At 5:45 PM on September 30, 1955, 24-year-old actor James
Dean was killed in Cholame, California, when the Porsche
he is driving hits a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection.

Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” had been released
at the time of his death (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant”
opened shortly afterward), but he was already on his way to superstardom—and the crash made him a legend.

James Dean loved racing cars, and in fact he and his brand-
new, $7000 Porsche Spyder convertible were on their way
to a race in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco.