Broadcast Pioneers

Roger Mudd (1928-2021) was an American broadcast journalist who was a correspondent and anchor for CBS News and NBC News. He was the recipient of the Peabody Award for his interview with Sen. Ted Kennedy, the Joan Shorenstein Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting, and five Emmy Awards. His smooth, comforting delivery added credence to his long-standing career of accurate and unbiased reporting. 

"Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of." ~Mudd

The Washington, D.C. native graduated from Wilson High School in 1945, later earning a Bachelor of Arts in History from Washington and Lee University. Mudd began his journalism career in Richmond, Virginia, as a reporter for The Richmond News Leader and for radio station WRNL. In the late 1950s, Mudd moved back to Washington, D.C., to become a reporter with WTOP News, the news division of the radio and television stations owned by Washington Post-Newsweek. Mudd quickly came to the attention of CBS News and joined the Washington bureau in 1961. For most of his career at CBS, Mudd was a Congressional correspondent. He also was the anchor of the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News and frequently substituted on the weekday and weeknight broadcasts when regular anchormen Douglas Edwards and Walter Cronkite were absent.

"The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational." ~Mudd

After losing the CBS sole anchor position to Dan Rather, Mudd went to NBC in 1980. He was co-anchor for the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw until Brokaw became the sole anchor. Beginning in 1987 Mudd was an essayist and political correspondent with the MacNeil–Lehrer Newshour and a primary anchor for over ten years with The History Channel. Though Mudd retired from full-time broadcasting in 2004, he remained involved with documentaries for The History Channel.

Deadly Avalanche

On this date in 1910, the deadliest avalanche in United States history swept away 96 lives on two Great Northern trains trapped by snow slides. The trains were brought through to Wellington, Washington just west of Stevens Pass then was eased onto a side track, normally used to allow trains to pass. The plan was to wait out the storm. It seemed like a safe place to park because there was never a slide there. A surviving train conductor sleeping in one of the mail train cars was thrown from the roof to the floor of the car several times as the train rolled down the slope before it disintegrated when the train slammed against a large tree. The body recovery effort took months. The dead were transported on toboggans down the west side of the Cascades to trains that carried them to Everett and Seattle. 

Boeing The First

 

On this date in 1957, the first production Boeing 707 jet-powered commercial airliner was rolled out at the Boeing aircraft assembly plant at Renton, Washington. The Model 707 was developed from the earlier Model 367–80, the “Dash Eighty,” prototype for an air-refueling tanker that would become the KC-135 Stratotanker. The new airliner had been sold to Pan American World Airways, the launch customer, as part of an order for twenty in 1955. The Boeing 707 was in production from 1958 to 1979 with military variants continuing until 1994. Over 1,000 were built.

Note: shown above during the airliner's second flight.