Bonus Episode: The Bard and a Bird Strike

Flight three seventy five were killed. You would never imagine that William Shakespeare had anything to do with this tragedy, but believe it or not, the disaster can be traced back to one of the Bard's most obscure plays, one written over three hundred and sixty years earlier, the one that makes reference to a particular bird Every gun Ship Start. Yes, I'm Sean Braswell and welcome to The Thread, a podcast from Azzi Media where we examine the interlocking lives and

events of history. This past season, we pulled the thread on the murder of John Lennon. Season two will debut early next year, but we'd like to share some bonus episodes. In the meantime, we call them many threads. Here's the first, about a nineteen sixty aviation disaster, actually sparked by William Shakespeare. It's hard to go a day in an English speaking country without encountering a word or phrase that originated with

England's famous sixteenth century bard wild goose chase. That's Shakespeare. Love is blind Shakespeare. It's Greek to me break the ice kill with kindness all Shakespeare. But it's not just his creative word play that captures our imagination. Sometimes it's what he references birds. For example, it is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the law that appears the fearful hollow of thine ear nightly she sings on yon, pomegranitree, believe me love, it was the nightingale,

was the law the herald of the moon? No nightingale. But there's one reference to a starling in all of Shakespeare's plays. It's in a play you probably didn't read in school, The Obscure Henry the fourth Part one. The reference is found in the first act, scene three. A fiery nobleman named Hotspur is upset with King Henry because he refused to ransom his brother in law, Mortimer, who was captured in a battle with the Scots. Hotspur promises he will not let the matter, even if it means

training a particular bird to badger the king. They I'll have a starling, So we talked to speak nothing but Maltimon give it. And with the writing of those words, the seeds of a disaster. Nearly four centuries later, we're planted. Shakespeare chose the starling as hotspurs fanciful Avian accomplice because it can mimic almost anything, especially other birds. But there are a few more things you need to know about starlings for this story thread. First, they are small, thick set,

dark birds with white speckles. They weigh about two and a half ounces, but they are packed with muscle. Starlings are twice as heavy as they should be for their size. Second, starlings traveling gangs, very large gangs called murmurations. Sometimes the number of starlings and a murmuration could number in the thousands. If you have ever witnessed a large murmuration of starlings as it soars and swoops across the sky, like one big creature. It's an experience you will not soon forget.

One final fact you need to know. Starlings are native to Europe. Yet more than two hundred million starlings are estimated to live in North America today. There were none here during Shakespeare's time. So what happened, Well, for that we have a single man to thank, an eccentric Bronx resident who loved birds, and the bard who was this bird lover. His name was Eugene Chieflin, and he had

a master plan. The wealthy New York drug maker wanted to introduce all of the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays to North America. Many of his attempts were unsuccessful, but

not with the starling. He released sixty of the birds in Central Park in and there was every reason to believe the Avian immigrants would not survive the harsh New York winter, but some of the small flock of European pilgrims managed to find shelter in the eaves of the American Museum of Natural History on the park's west side, and the starlings did what Schiaflin hoped they would do. They went forth and multiplied big time, and not just

in New York City. Starlings reached the Mississippi River by nineteen thirty. By nineteen fifty, they were pretty much everywhere and drove out Native American species like bluebirds and woodpeckers, which is how Shakespeare's single fictional starling came to be get over two hundred million flesh and blood descendants in North America. One of the North American starling's favorite nest sites in the mid twentieth century was Tobin Bridge in Boston.

The city's big dig construction project would eventually change that, but over one hundred and fifty thousand starlings used to flock to Tobin Bridge every evening at sunset as commuters drove home. It seemed harmless enough, even beautiful. Up next, Eugene Chieflins starling spark an unforgettable tragedy. They hit the front of the airplane, resembling machine gun fire, just burning. There wasn't a square inch in my windshield that wasn't splattered.

I couldn't see a thing. That's a reading of an account from Captain W. H. Jenkins. His plane was still on the runway at Boston's Logan Airport in nineteen sixty when the starlings hit his windshield. He was able to bring the aircraft to a stop. But two weeks earlier, on October fourth, Eastern Airlines Flight three seventy five was not so lucky. A cloud of starling's headed home to Tobin Bridge, maybe twenty thousand of them, collided with the

plane seven seconds after takeoff. Three of the plane's four propeller engines were overrun with birds. It happened so quickly the pilots did not utter a word to the Logan Airport tower. The plane rolled and crashed almost vertically into the harbors shallow water, not far from where cousins of yachts were anchored offshore. It remains the worst bird strike in US aviation history. Starlings may be small, but they are considered by aviation experts to be a lethal threat

in large numbers. A single starling, writes Michael Califatus and his book bird strike can be a feathered bullet. A swarm of the birds is a feathered fusillade. The scene in the harbor after Flight three seventy five went down was horrific, but the response was heroic. Sixty lives were lost, but there would have been more. If local residents, including several teenage boys, had not acted quickly, many of the

passengers were trapped under water with their seatbelts fastened. Rescuers waded out into the debris and formed a human chain in the thick mud to pull out survivors. A thorough investigation of the crash was conducted, thousands of drugs starlings were fired into identical propeller engines to simulate the bird strike. The tragic crash of Flight three seventy five set in motion new design features and precautions that have made bird strikes far less common today, but they still happen from

time to time. The most notable occurred in two thousand nine, when Chelsea Shlenburger A. K. Souley had to make an emergency water landing in the Hudson River after his plane was struck by a flock of Canadian geese. Eugene Chiaflin could never have known the chain of events that his experiment in Central Park would set in motion, and the damage done does not stop with the tragedy in Boston. Starlings do not just fell planes. They transmit disease, They

consume cattle feed. Sometimes they devour entire wheat fields. Starlings are estimated to cost US agriculture around one billion dollars a year in crop damage. As Shakespeare once wrote, when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions, and occasionally, it could be added, they come in murmurations. Every sometimes when this ship, cong say and stock this. Sorry, yes, never, it's wrong. Let's cover us always. We always. The Threat

is produced by Libby Coleman and me Sean braswell. Our editors are Carlos Watson and Samir Rao. Chris Hoff engineered our show special thanks to Cindy Carpi and sun Jeeve Tandon and Tracy Moraan. This episode features music by Johnny Flynn the song called Murmuration. Check us out at aussi dot com or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no further than the flashback section of AUSI dot com. That's o z y dot com. Nice, it's a colt