current events

less than an ten minutes ago, a friend working at Nickelodeon in midtown told me he saw a plane make an emergency landing in the Hudson. my blood went cold.

slight side note...
i was sitting in physics class sophomore year of highschool in nyc when the loudspeakers crackled to life and announced that an airplane had just crashed into one of the twin towers, so i've had a few too many plane crashes in my life.
back to the story...

at almost the same time, a co-worker at my company in south jersey alerted me to the cnn coverage of the story. apparently an airbus a320 headed from laguardia airport to north carolina failed miserably at its takeoff, and had to make an emergency landing in the river. an expert witness made a startling observation about the aquatic landing, saying the aircraft "made a big splash."
thankfully, a few humans on board a nearby ferry were not so dense, and managed to toss life jackets into the frigid water for the 140+ people now sinking slowly into nyc's most infamous body of water.
ok update.
it seems that everyone was able to exit the sinking craft safely.
the commercial aircraft experienced what is known as a "bird strike", which is a finely crafted euphemism for "playing chicken with a flock of innocent birds and winning." the plane was in the air for all of 180 seconds before violently sucking at least one bird into the aluminum vortex of one of the engine turbines, immediately decimating the engine in a firey blaze, and hopefully killing the avian creature somewhat quickly and painlessly.
another interesting bit of information is that cnn, upon updating their site with the latest news on the catastrophe, realized the idiocy of half the witness's comment and chose to omit the part i have quoted above. ah, the internet.