Stuff That Happened

  Tragic mountaineering disasters are all too common on extremely high altitude mountains such as K2, Cho Oyu, and of course, Mt. Everest. However, even on some more moderately sized mountains, tragedy can always strike. In 1971, a group of 15-16 year old students were taken on an expedition in the remote area of the Cairngorms in the Scottish Highlands. This mountain range can reach a height of just over 4000 feet above sea level, a seemingly small number compared to the massive 29,000 foot Everest. Nevertheless, the conditions on the Cairngorms can be extremely unpredictable and during this innocent and routine expedition, the deterioration of the weather would leave 8 young climbers fighting for their lives in what became Britain’s worst ever mountaineering disaster. The Cairngorms are a beautiful region of mountains in Scotland which include long glacial valleys and several mountains, such as the 4,295 foot Ben Macdui and the 4,085 foot Cairn Gorm Mountain, from which the regio...

On September 11th, 2001, terrorists took control of four commercial airplanes with the intention of using them as suicide missiles in a fully planned terrorist attack against the United States. Three of the planes hit their intended targets – the Twin Towers and the Pentagon – while which was likely planned for the capitol building crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, saving countless lives, thanks to a passenger revolt. Still, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks. The news coverage quickly revealed the mastermind behind the attack – Osama Bin Laden – one of the founders of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that planned and executed the operation. Bin Laden had been planning the attack since the mid-90’s with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who had more ambitious ideas. At one point, they involved up to ten hijacked planes on both the east and west coasts with planes crashing not only into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and Capitol but also the CIA and FBI headquarters, the Washin...