The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Revisiting Richmond’s Worst Airplane Disaster: Flight 201/8

Monday, July 3, 2017

Revisiting Richmond’s Worst Airplane Disaster: Flight 201/8 - November 8, 1961.

The June 30, 2017 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch announced that "A plane crash in Virginia that killed 74 Army recruits in 1961 is among several topics that will be highlighted on new highway markers across the state. A marker near Richmond International Airport in Henrico County will tell the story of the Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 crash, which killed 74 Army recruits and three of five crew members on Nov. 8, 1961. An exact spot for the marker has not yet been decided."

Selden told the story of that crash in a November 2013 blog post on this site. Below is a link to the blog post.

Click HERE

1 comment:

rocketwerks said...: Nice post & post link!; July 3, 2017 at 5:33 PM

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.