If you were, I think I might know what your parents were doing on November 9, 1965! LOL

This is a series of ActiveRain History Station programs using United States postage stamps as our history book.

For other programs in this series on the ActiveRain History Station, simply click here.

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The full blame for your parents doing the naughty, naughty can't be laid on their bed (or anywhere else) since on this day in 1965, the Northeast Blackout affected 30 million people in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Ontario, Canada.

In some areas, people went without electricity for up to 13½ hours. And what do YOU do when the lights go out?

According to Wikipedia,

"The cause of the failure was human error that happened days before the blackout when maintenance personnel incorrectly set a protective relay on one of the transmission lines between the Niagara generating station Sir Adam Beck and Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario. The safety relay, which is set to trip if the current exceeds the capacity of the transmission line, was set too low."

The misset relay caused a domino effect when it shut down, forcing electricity on to other power transmission lines and overloading them, causing them to shut down. As transmission lines shut down, power plants, with no place to send their electricity, also shut down to prevent damage. On and on and on....

Other interesting facts about the Northeast Blackout of 1965:

1. Many people were trapped in elevators for several hours.
2. Fort Erie in Ontario did not lose power because it was using older 25Hz generators rather than newer 60Hz generators.
3. WABC radio host Dan Ingram in New York City reported that he thought the music seemed slow. Analysis afterwards revealed that electric frequency up to six minutes before the blackout had fallen to as low as 51Hz, causing things tuned to the 60Hz frequency to run slower.
4. UFO reports increased over the blacked out areas.
5. Holyoke, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; and parts of New York City and Bergen County, New Jersey, did not lose power because they were using gas turbine power generators.
6. A full moon lit up the dark sky.
7. Only five reports of looting occurred in New York City, the lowest crime total for any night in the city's history.
8. Popular culture about the blackout:
   ♪ "Where Were You When the Lights Went out," 1968 movie
   ♪ "Massachusetts," a song by the Bee Gees
   ♪ "The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara," an episode of Bewitched.
   ♪ "Double Identity," an episode of Quantum Leap.
   ♪ "Double Drick," an episode of Green Acres
   ♪ "Sports and Leisure," an episode of Wings
9. Even though episode #4 of the first season of Monk mentions one of the character's conception during the blackout, J. Richard Udry, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, did a careful statistical study of birth rates in the affected areas and found no increase. Drat. So much for the title of my post here. ☺☺☺

So where were you on November 9, 1965?

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