Tuesday, November 9, 1965 The Frances Hubbard Diaries

Tuesday, November 9, 1965 
Cloudy and cold.  I went to Oneonta with Roberta and John, home about 5 pm.  Madalyn went with me to Phyllis's to plan Christmas program at night.  Power failure in Northeast.  Lights flickered off and on and dimmed for about 2 hours from 5 to 7.  Parts of Pennsylvania, all of New England, parts of Canada and New York state were affected.

Comment:  Weird...Mary Ann and I were not affected by the blackout even thought we lived in Niagara Falls just minutes away from the plant that started it all:  The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant.The plant was a prime attraction for friends and family who often visited us while we lived there and we went there many times.  A small surge from the plant tripped an improperly set relay on the heavily loaded transmission lines into Southern Ontario disabling it and that somehow tripped relays all through the eastern US shutting down various power plants in the region. Strangely enough, the two large cities closest to the initial event, Buffalo and Niagara Falls remained powered up because the relays servicing our area through Niagara Mohawk did not trip.....we also missed the 2003 power outage in the NE and Canada by living in Ohio at the time but were present in Italy in 2006 in the European outage.....btw, today in 1938 was also the date of "The Night Of Broken Glass" in Germany when 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps starting the Holocaust..https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-night-of-broken-glass