This Weekend In History…

August 27, 1990

Stevie Ray Vaughan and members of Eric Clapton‘s road crew are killed in a helicopter crash. They had just played at a concert with Clapton at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in Wisconsin. The helicopter took off headed for Chicago when it crashed into a ski resort. Everyone on board was killed, which included Vaughan, pilot Jeff Brown, agent Bobby Brooks, bodyguard Nigel Browne, and tour manager Colin Smythe. It was foggy at the time of the flight and while the pilot was qualified to fly by instruments in an airplane, he was not qualified in a helicopter.
The day before the crash, Vaughan told his band members about a nightmare that he had in which he was at his own funeral and saw thousands of mourners.

August 28, 1963

During his famous march on Washington, the civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaims “I have a dream.” Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the Civil Rights Movement.
I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream…

Hurricane Katrina

August 29, 2005

One of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded strikes the U.S. Gulf Coast. The cities of Mobile, Alabama, Waveland and Biloxi, Mississippi, and Slidell, Louisiana were devastated by the storm. Levees separating Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans were breached by the surge, flooding 80% of the city. At least 1,836 people were killed. With the damage estimated at $81.2 billion, it was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.