On this day: Air Florida goes down

IN 1983, discount airline Air Florida had a flight leaving National Airport in DC (well, in Virginia) for Florida. After some time in the snow, the pilots, who did not want to return to the terminal for de-icing and had attempted to keep the plane snow-free by moving close to planes in front of them, elected to take off. It was the wrong choice—the last of many the pilots made. Flight 90 crashed in to the freezing Potomac, killing nearly everyone aboard, and several people on the bridge into which it crashed. Flight 90 peaked news coverage for Air Florida, which would only be surpassed two years later when the airline folded.

On this day: Earhart crosses the Pacific

In the second-to-last major flight of her career, Amelia Earhart flew from Honolulu to Oakland, the first solo flight from Hawai'i to the mainland. Two years later, she'd again visit Hawai'i, this time as her final stop before the ill-fated journey west across the Pacific.

The 1937 peaked news coverage of Earhart, which dropped rather precipitously with the coming of the war. Other peaks in news have generally had to do with various searches for or conspiracy theories about her demise, although none has found any concrete information. If any ever turns up, it may change this graph considerably, but that's unlikely.