Word: planing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...deal anytime a terrorist manages to get a bomb onto a plane. But if airline security had to fail, at least it failed for Richard Reid. The al-Qaeda operative concealed a bomb in his shoe on a 2001 transatlantic flight from Paris to Miami. But once onboard, the terrorist proved utterly unable to get his shoe to ignite, attracting the attention of flight attendants who saw him repeatedly muttering while attempting to light matches. After noticing a wire running from his shoes, passengers doused Reid, tied him up and sedated him for the rest of the flight...
...none of the doctors at the Burundian hospital where Deogratias Niyizonkiza worked showed up. War had erupted, forcing the promising medical student to embark on a harrowing flight through the bloodstained hills of Burundi and Rwanda. Armed with a ticket bought by a friend's father, he boarded a plane to New York City--where he arrived with no English, no contacts and just $200 in his pocket. Facing hunger, homelessness and heavy odds, the young refugee--propelled by the kindness of strangers--rose from the streets to Columbia University in two short years. It's a true story...
...exhilarating flying back to Kabul after being gone for three years. The plane came in low from the east, in the coppery light of dawn, and I could make out the canyons of the Kabul Gorge where, in 1842, a retreating British army of 4,500 soldiers, accompanied by 12,000 family members and servants, vanished into the gorge and only one man, a surgeon's assistant on horseback, made it out alive. The rest were massacred or died in the snow...
...memorable, full of acerbic wit and unusual metaphor. The writing illuminates not only the landscape and the people in general, but also a succession of unforgettable characters that illustrate the range of issues confronting modern Africa. One essentially tragicomic figure is the Sikh whom Naipaul meets on the plane to Nairobi; on the one hand, the author is repelled by the bumbling, garrulous man, overeager to befriend a stranger who is similarly of Indian origin. Yet Naipaul writes with uncharacteristic feeling for the Sikh’s profound predicament as a British Asian going to Tanzania to try and extricate...
...decade later, shortly after TWA Flight 847 took off from Athens in 1985, two gun-toting terrorists forced their way into the cockpit, demanding that the plane touch down in Lebanon. Once on the ground, they held passengers captive, threatened them with guns and murdered one hostage, dumping his body onto the tarmac. Nonetheless, after the captives were rescued, one of them reportedly later said of his captors, "They weren't bad people; they let me eat, they let me sleep, they gave me my life...