Out of the Blue

I left work at 1PM today- after the graveyard shift, I had to work another site for half a shift. Staffing is an issue, my department is down to three people, so we have to stretch to cover everything. When I left the site, the sky was an incredible azure (it was still fairly cold, so insert an Azure Agony joke as you see fit), as the cliche would have it, there was not a cloud in the sky:

When I finally got home from work, I put on the radi-adi-o, and heard the breaking news that a small plane had made an emergency landing on the Major Deegan Expressway. The fact that there were no fatalities boggles the mind.

When I was a 'ute, I always used to joke about Major Deegan, the guy who lent his name to the expressway- this line of jocularity was kicked off by a classmate of my brother Sweetums who, before a jaunt to Yankee Stadium, claimed that "Me and the Deegan are like this (holding his index and middle fingers together to denote closeness)." Who the hell was Major Deegan, and why is there a major highway named after him? Is he a made-up character, like Cap'n Crunch, or a fake officer like Colonel Sanders? In due time, I actually did some research and found out that he was a major in the Army Corps of Engineers, an architect, and a local politician of note. Of course, this information is now at one's fingertips- a current-day wag would pose that "who is that Major Deegan guy?" question, and someone would say, "Google it, knucklehead!" before the wag could get the gag going.