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If you live in a colder region of the world, then you know that a river at the winter doesn't

always look like a river.

Frozen or not, it can look like a strangely enticing but nearly impassable liquid highway

on a distant planet.

Slow on the surface, but deadly strong just below.

More kinetic and active than anyone watching from a bridge would be able to see.

The Monongahela River, or the Monon, as the locals call it, was running at 8 to 10 knots on a

January night of 1956. The water was 35 degrees. The air above it, 27. There was no ice on the river that day,

but there was ice on its edges and ice in the rocks along Beck's run which will become

familiar to you tonight if you're not from the area. There was also ice on the railing of the

homestead high-level bridge where, just before four in the afternoon,

drivers heading home from the local mills started to slow down because something in their peripheral vision just wasn't right.

A monster was silently descending from the sky, too large to be airborne, too silent to be an airplane.

But an airplane was exactly what it was.

The B-25 Mitchell came in from the northeast at maybe 50 feet over the bridge,

maybe 30, depending on which witness you talk to, and how many decades have gone by since then.

Both engines were dead and the propellers weren't turning.

The plane was gliding.

People got out of their cars and a trucker stopped on River Road.

...