December 1972 - December 29, 1972 (Friday)

December 29, 1972 (Friday)

• At 11:42 p.m., Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed into the Everglades in Florida, killing 101 of 176 on board. The cockpit crew had been preoccupied with checking the L-1011's landing gear when a light on the instrument panel had failed to come on. Distracted, nobody realized that the autopilot had become disengaged, and that they were slowly losing altitude. The last recorded words were the co-pilot saying "We did something to the altitude. We're still at 2000, right?" and the pilot responding, "Hey, what's happening here?" Ghosts of the dead are said to have been seen by others, as described in John G. Fuller's bestseller Ghost of Flight 401.
• Edward Lorenz proposed the now-famous butterfly effect in a paper delivered to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, entitled "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"
• Life magazine's final weekly issue carried the December 29, 1972, date, though it was on newsstands the week before, the first issue having been on November 23, 1936.
• The U.S. Army received its last draftees. After the close of the Vietnam War conscription of Americans into the service ceased, and all services were composed of volunteers.
• The takeover of Israel's embassy in Thailand, by Palestinian terrorists, ended peacefully after intervention by Egypt's ambassador and Thai officials. The four Arab gunmen, granted safe passage to Cairo, released their Israeli hostages, including the ambassador. Before everyone departed, the Egyptian and Israeli ambassadors, the four gunmen and five diplomats all ate dinner together inside the embassy.
• Died: Joseph Cornell, 69, American sculptor and philosopher.