Show Notes
Eighty years ago, on July 28, 1945, an Army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan. A dictation machine in a nearby office happened to capture the sound of the plane as it hit the Empire State Building at the 79th floor. Fourteen people were killed. Debris from the plane severed the cables of an elevator, which fell 79 stories with a young woman inside. She survived. The crash prompted new legislation that—for the first time—gave citizens the right to sue the federal government.
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In the spring of 1981, the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings met for a minor league baseball game of little importance. But over the course of 33 innings—8 hours and 25 minutes—the game made history. It was the longest professional baseball game ever played. This story was produced in collaboration with ESPN's 30 for 30.
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A few years ago we did a story about Martha Lillard, a woman who had spent most of her life sleeping in a device called an iron lung. Martha had caught polio in the early 1950s, and, like many polio survivors, she had difficulty breathing on her own. Her iron lung was a big metal ventilator that fit her entire body inside and used bellows to suck air in and out, helping her to breathe. Martha was the last person in the U.S. to use one. Martha Lillard died on June 26, 2026. As a remembrance, we're revisiting our story about her.