Claim: A woman who had survived the destruction of the World Trade Center died on American Airlines
Status: True.
Origins: Death speaks: There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me." The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, "Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?" "That was not a threatening gesture," I said, "it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."
[Maugham, 1933]
On September 11, 2001, when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center, Hilda Yolanda Mayol had the good fortune to escape from the ground floor restaurant where she worked in that complex. Her luck lasted only a further two months — she was one of those aboard the doomed American Airlines
aboard.
Mayol, 26, was headed home to the Dominican Republic to vacation with her mother and her two children, who had traveled there from New York two weeks earlier. She perished along with 259 others on that flight. Up to a further nine on the ground also died in the accident.
Another passenger on that ill-starred flight was originally said to have experienced a close call similar to that of
Yet another survivor of the war on terrorism perished when
Ruben Rodriguez, 32, had just returned from a
Petty Officer (second class) Rodriguez had, along with the rest of Enterprise's crew, arrived safely back in the USA on
Barbara "fatal rendevous" Mikkelson
Last updated: 23 April 2008
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