Curiosity & the Texas Tower

Children are naturally curious. The child’s seemingly never ending questions of “why?” enables them to learn about the world – although parents may sometimes find it annoying! The questions are usually forgotten over time and replaced by new ones. But as I can personally attest, some childhood questions are never forgotten.

Our family’s vacations always included my maternal grandparents – and Nana’s stack of the latest Reader’s Digest magazines. In one of the magazines, there was a frightening picture of a structure with a large platform, red and white domes and antennas laying sideways as it was sliding into a stormy sea. Too young to read the accompanying story, I would look at the picture over and over again. When I finally abandoned my shyness for a minute and asked Nana “what is this?,”she simply said “it’s the Texas Tower.” I had so many other questions – but I was too shy to ask.

Well, curiosity may kill the cat, but thankfully it does not kill humans!  Fifty plus years after seeing the Texas Tower picture, I turned to the internet in search of answers to my childhood questions about it. After many hours of searching, Google proved its worth by not only finding the story of the Texas Tower but also the picture that was in the Reader’s Digest story!

Turns out that the Texas Tower fell  into the sea during a storm in January 1961 and all 28 people onboard lost their lives. And it was not an oil rig off the coast of the Texas as I had long assumed. The ill-fated tower, actually named Texas Tower #4, was one of several U.S. Air Force radar platforms installed in the 1950s off the U.S east coast to detect incoming Soviet bombers. Investigations found that the Tower’s collapse was the result of prior hurricane damage, design flaws, and human error.

So fellow non-felines, never stop being curious! Check out this edition of The Download for some interesting reads that will pique your curiosity!

Happy Reading!

Suzanne Daniels