On June 19, 1947, a Pan American flight went down in the Syrian Desert in the middle of the night. Engines failing, fuselage on fire, fifteen people killed on impact — including everyone in the cockpit. Among the survivors was an off-duty 25-year-old pilot named Gene Roddenberry, riding as a passenger. With broken ribs, he pulled people out of the burning wreckage, organized the survivors, improvised shelter from a life raft, and walked four miles across open desert to find help. Almost twenty years later, he created Star Trek. This is the story you've probably never heard about the man who imagined humanity's future in the stars — and what he did the night the sky fell.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}