Notre Dame Football Coach Knute Rockne killed in a plane crash, Duke rallied from down 22 to win, and Calvin Peete won the Players Championship - This DiSH for March 31

This day in Sports History.

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It's March 31st and on this day in 1931, legendary Notre Dame football coach Newt Rockney was

killed in a plane crash along with seven others.

Rockney had coached the fighting Irish for 13 seasons and he was coming off back-to-back

national championships and back-to-back undefeated seasons.

Rockney left Kansas City and was on his way to Los Angeles.

Rockney had a busy schedule planned for the next week, meeting with filmmakers about

a possible movie about Notre Dame football.

He had a speaking engagement lined up with his friend Will Rogers and as National Spokes

person for Studebaker cars, he was going to meet with West Coast auto dealers.

Here's the thing though.

The TWA Fokker F10A had been inspected two days prior with the mechanic refusing to

sign off on it, saying the plane was not fit to fly and nobody was safe in it.

His trip should have been delayed or another plane found to replace it.

Instead, he and his group took off anyway.

The conditions were not great either.

The pilot encountered thick, low-hanging clouds.

The temperature plummeted and ice began forming on the wings.

An hour into the flight, the pilot actually radioed.

They were turning back to Kansas City.

But the Wichita station urged the crew to keep flying West.

Instead of getting better, conditions worsened.

The plane's instruments froze up and the pilots were left squinting through the windshield

to navigate by landmarks on the ground.

The plane entered a spiral the pilot was unable to pull out of and it crashed in a calipaster

in Bazar, Kansas.

Rockney and the seven others on the plane died instantly.

President Herbert Hoover called it a national tragedy.

The nation was shocked but there was quick action taken that undoubtedly saved the lives

of future air travelers.

The plane Rockney had been on had been a wooden-winged plane.

The entire fleet of Focker F-10s were grounded immediately and no new wooden-winged planes

were ever put back into service.

The design and manufacturer of the all-metal Douglas DC-2 was a direct result of the crash

that killed Rockney.

The DC-2 and future DC-3 have been credited for providing the safety to allow for rapid

expansion of airline travel.

Rockney's legacy lives on, his 88% winning percentage is still the highest of any college

coach in history and his win-one for the Gipper motivational speech is still one of the

all-time classics.

Newt Rockney was 43.

Also on this day in 2001, the Duke Blue Devils erased a 22-point deficit to beat Maryland

95-84 and the second biggest comeback in tournament history.

On this day in 1985, African American golfer Calvin Pete broke through to win the

players' championship, his first as a touring pro.

And in 1974, the Toronto Northman of the New World League of American football signed

three Miami dolphins to play for the team.

Larry Zonka, Jim Kick and Paul Warfield were lured north of the border before the Canadian

government came in and stifled the team altogether from competing with its own Canadian football

league.

The team was forced to move back south of the border to Memphis, Tennessee.

And time now for today's, that's got nothing to do with sports, fun fact.

On this day in 2021 in Suzhou, China, a woman at her son's wedding realized his bride

to be was her long-lost daughter.

The girl had been taken from the woman and put up for adoption.

The mother recognized a distinctive birthmark on her left hand.

The marriage was able to continue though because the son had been adopted and was not biologically

related to his soon-to-be wife.

This has been an original, thrife-sweet production.