News of the purported death of Ernest Hemingway, allegedly killed when his single engine plane crashed somewhere in Uganda, Africa on January 24, 1954 caused networks to break into their programming delivering otherwise shocking news to the world.
Trouble was, it wasn’t true. According to updated reports:
ENTEBBE, Upanda. Jan. 25 Ernest Hemingway came out of the lion country of Uganda today with only an (injured arm to show for two jungle airplane crashes he survived in one week end). The American author who often ‘has made the African jungle the background for his tales of rugged life and violent death went to a doctor at Hutiaba. The doctor advised an X-ray of the injured arm. Rut Hemingway apparently thought he was not that badly injured.
Hemingway and his wife boarded a De Havilland Rapide aircraft sent by the East Africa Airway Charter Corporation to return them to Entebbe. On takeoff, the Rapide hit a bump, bounced, hit another bump and careened off the runway. It ground looped and burst into flames. The fire destroyed the plane but the Hemingways escaped in a run of luck unrivaled in the writer’s array of fiction. The Hemingways spent the night at Butiaba and left by automobile today for Entebbe, 120 miles south.
But for several hours it was assumed the iconic American author had died in the crash – and this bulletin which came in the middle of concert by the Longines Symphonette arrived with sobering news that, even though unconfirmed, it was almost certain we had lost Ernest Hemingway.
Here’s the bulletin as it was heard on January 24, 1954.
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