February 3, 1959 (Tuesday)
- American Airlines Flight 320 from Chicago crashed into the East River while trying to land at La Guardia Airport, killing 65 of the 73 persons on board.
- Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, and Lawrence Dunbar Reddick depart from Idlewild Airport New York for a tour of The Middle East and India.
- Died: J.P. Richardson, 28, "The Big Bopper", American singer; Buddy Holly, 22, American singer; Ritchie Valens, 17, American singer. On their way to Fargo, North Dakota, Holly, Valens and Richardson were killed. They had boarded an airplane at Mason City, Iowa, along with pilot Roger Peterson. Waylon Jennings had given his seat up to Richardson, while Valens and Holly's guitarist Tommy Allsup had flipped a coin to see who would get the other seat on the plane. The Beechcraft Bonanza airplane took off at 12:50 a.m. and crashed minutes later on the farm of Delbert Juhl, killing all four persons on board. This became popularly known as "The Day the Music Died".
- Died: Vincent Astor, 67, American philanthropist who inherited a fortune after the death of his father on the RMS Titanic in 1912, then donated most of it to various charities.
Read more about this topic: February 1959
Famous quotes containing the word february:
“In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it’s modern architecture.”
—Nancy Banks-Smith, British columnist. Guardian (London, February 20, 1979)