I was really excited to do the Wikipedia trail assignment and really ended up enjoying it. I can definitely see myself doing one of these again!
I started with a Wikipedia post about Indian Palm Squirrels because I read somewhere on the class site that there is a story about squirrels who help Rama by building a bridge from Sri Lanka to India, so I decided to look up their significance in Hinduism. I also watch the squirrels that play in the tree outside my apartment every morning while I drink my coffee, so this one was really up my alley.
The Indian Palm Squirrels page talked about how they were introduced to the Comoro Islands during the late 19th century. I had never heard of the Comoro Islands, so I clicked onto that article. The Comoro Islands are off of the coast of Mozambique and to the northwest of Madagascar. They were also the location of a 1996 plane crash as a result of a hijacking, which led me to my next article, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was an airliner that was hijacked by three 20 year old Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia. The told the pilot to head for Australia, but the plane did not have enough fuel to do so, since it was only scheduled to travel from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. The plane ran out of fuel off the coast of the Comoro Islands and crash-landed in the water.
I started with a Wikipedia post about Indian Palm Squirrels because I read somewhere on the class site that there is a story about squirrels who help Rama by building a bridge from Sri Lanka to India, so I decided to look up their significance in Hinduism. I also watch the squirrels that play in the tree outside my apartment every morning while I drink my coffee, so this one was really up my alley.
The Indian Palm Squirrels page talked about how they were introduced to the Comoro Islands during the late 19th century. I had never heard of the Comoro Islands, so I clicked onto that article. The Comoro Islands are off of the coast of Mozambique and to the northwest of Madagascar. They were also the location of a 1996 plane crash as a result of a hijacking, which led me to my next article, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was an airliner that was hijacked by three 20 year old Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia. The told the pilot to head for Australia, but the plane did not have enough fuel to do so, since it was only scheduled to travel from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. The plane ran out of fuel off the coast of the Comoro Islands and crash-landed in the water.
This led me to my final article, water landing. This article was about water landings of planes and talked about how difficult and rare it is to do so without injuries or fatalities. Water landing is a common saying, but the technical term for this event is ditching. One famous example of ditching, is the landing on the Hudson River in 2009 where all of the passengers and crew survived.
Ha ha, that is a perfect example of how wild a Wikipedia trail can be. From squirrels to water landings: excellent! :-)
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