Fred Bauder wrote:
let's just get a grip and wipe the article.
take the long-term view -- will anyone remember this
in twenty years' time?
Maybe not outside of the US, but probably within it. I
still vividly remember when Jessica McClure ("Baby
Jessica") fell down that well in Texas in 1987. She
should have an article too.
Yes and there was another child in the 1950s, and the chicken that lived
after his head was cut off, again from the fifties, and Bridey Murphey, etc.
See:
http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.htm
I certainly think that there is a place in an encyclopedia for the
offbeat and ephemeral. They can be a source of endless fascination to
the reader who discovers them and proceeds to introduce them at a
dinner-table conversation with the words "Did you know that....?"
Articles about Jessica McClure, Bridey Murphey and [[Mike (headless
chicken)]] are all perfectly appropriate.
In science and technology there are any number of attempts that might
have worked but were superceded by a more practical idea that
wasdiscovered before the old plan could be put into operation. Thus the
Collins International Telegraph Company scheme to lay a telegraph wire
from New York to London via Alaska and Siberia, quashed by the undersea
cable laid by the "Great Eastern". Also the 1920s plan to put a series
of floating airports as refueling stops across the Atlantic, which
quickly lost its appeal after Lindbergh's famous flight.
Ec