Plot
A newspaper reporter, Bruce Corey, returns from World War I to New York City. After reporting to his job at his old newspaper, Corey finds that his old editor doesn't like his new ideas.
Corey and his war correspondent friends start their own down-market newspaper which will feature "the news before it happens." Corey gambles with a mob boss and wins the money to start up his paper, the New York Mercury, an instant success.
However, because of stories that may implicate the newspaper's silent partner in a number of crimes, Corey finds himself and his staff threatened and even the targets of gunfire. Corey finally kills the mob boss and flees the country on a plane that is attempting a trans-Atlantic flight. The plane crashes and he is killed. Rather than embroil the paper in the murder investigation, Corey embarks on what he knows is an extremely dangerous flight. The plane does crash mid-ocean at the end he is reported to have swum away from a rescue craft.
Five Star Final is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film about the excesses of tabloid journalism directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Edward G. Robinson, Aline MacMahon and Boris Karloff. The screenplay was by Robert Lord and Byron Morgan based on the 1930 play of the same name by Louis Weitzenkorn. The title refers to the practice of newspapers publishing a series of editions throughout the day, with their final-edition front page having five stars printed and the word "Final." "Five Star Final" is also a font introduced during World War I and then favored by newspapers for its narrow type.
"I Shot an Arrow into the Air" is the fifteenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-American actor of stage and screen, who was popular during Hollywood's Golden Age. He appeared in 30 Broadway plays and more than 100 films during a 50-year career and is best remembered for his tough-guy roles as gangsters in such films as Little Caesar and Key Largo. During his career, Robinson received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in House of Strangers.
The Kegworth air disaster occurred when British Midland Airways Flight 092, a Boeing 737-400, crashed onto the motorway embankment between the M1 motorway and A453 road near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989.
Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 was a scheduled flight along the West Coast of the United States, from Los Angeles, California, to San Francisco. On December 7, 1987, the British Aerospace 146-200A, registration N350PS, crashed in San Luis Obispo County near Cayucos, after being hijacked by a passenger.
The Ventriloquist is the name of multiple supervillains appearing in American comic books and other media published by DC Comics. All of the Ventriloquist's versions are enemies of Batman, belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up Batman's rogues gallery.
Night Has a Thousand Eyes is a 1948 American horror film directed by John Farrow and starring Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell and John Lund. The screenplay was written by Barré Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Cornell Woolrich, originally published under the pseudonym George Hopley.
The Irish Mob is a usually crime family-based ethnic collective of organized crime syndicates composed of primarily ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and have been in existence since the early 19th century. Originating in Irish-American street gangs – famously first depicted in Herbert Asbury's 1927 book, The Gangs of New York – the Irish Mob has appeared in most major U.S. and Canadian cities, especially in the Northeast and the urban industrial, including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Chicago.
BOAC Flight 781 (BA781/BOA781) was a scheduled British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) passenger flight from Singapore to London. On 10 January 1954, a de Havilland Comet passenger jet operating the flight suffered an explosive decompression at altitude and crashed, killing all 35 people on board.
Gothic, also known as Gothic: A Romance, is a 1990 Batman comic book storyline that ran through the Legends of the Dark Knight monthly series and was later compiled into trade paperback form. It was written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Klaus Janson.
Pan Am Flight 7 was a westbound round-the-world flight operated by Pan American World Airways. On November 8, 1957, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser 10-29 serving the flight, named Clipper Romance of the Skies, crashed in the Pacific Ocean en route to Honolulu International Airport from San Francisco. The crash killed all 36 passengers and eight crew members.
Bullets or Ballots is a 1936 American gangster film starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell, Barton MacLane, and Humphrey Bogart. Robinson plays a police detective who infiltrates a crime gang. This is the first of several films featuring both Robinson and Bogart.
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the sixth president of Pakistan, died in an aircraft crash on 17 August 1988 in Bahawalpur near the Sutlej River. Zia's close assistant Akhtar Abdur Rehman, American diplomat Arnold Lewis Raphel and 27 others also died upon impact.
Flight Command is a 1940 American U.S. Navy film from MGM, produced by Frank Borzage and directed by J. Walter Ruben and Frank Borzage (uncredited), starring Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, and Walter Pidgeon. It has the distinction of often being credited as the first Hollywood film glorifying the American military to be released after the outbreak of World War II in Europe, a year before the U.S. entered the conflict.
The 1949 Manchester BEA Douglas DC-3 accident occurred when a twin-engined British European Airways Douglas DC-3 crashed on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines near Oldham, Lancashire, after a flight from Belfast. The accident killed 24 of the passengers and crew on board. The aircraft had first flown in 1944, and was captained by F. W. Pinkerton, a former RAF serviceman who, as a sergeant, had been posted missing during World War II. The airline was government-owned.
The Thousand Plane Raid is a 1969 DeLuxe Color film directed by Boris Sagal and starring Christopher George and Laraine Stephens. Although claimed to be derived from Ralph Barker's The Thousand Plane Raid, the storyline of the film inaccurately portrays the first raid as an 8th Air Force mission while the actual attack was undertaken by 1,047 Royal Air Force bombers against the city of Cologne, Germany in May 1942.
Bride by Mistake is a 1944 American romantic comedy film directed by Richard Wallace, and starring Alan Marshal and Laraine Day.
The Flight 105 UFO sighting occurred on July 4, 1947, when three crew members aboard a United Airlines flight reported seeing multiple unidentified objects in the skies over the Pacific Northwest. A week prior, private pilot Kenneth Arnold had reported seeing similar objects nearby – a sighting that was followed by nearly 800 "copycat" reports during the summer of 1947. Four days after the Flight 105 sighting, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc"; that statement was quickly retracted after the crashed object was identified as a conventional weather balloon. The following month, on July 29, an air crew flying the same route also reported unidentified objects.
