This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Off the east coast of mainland Canada is the island of Newfoundland. The island is as

far east as you can go and still be in Canada, so far east in fact that it has its own time

zone, a half an hour later than anywhere else in North America.

If you've seen a photograph of the island, it's probably the one that went viral last

year of a small village on the eastern coast and the foreground are rolling hills in a couple

of houses. In the background, a gigantic iceberg floats by on the choppy blue sea.

Yeah, icebergs float by occasionally, but that one was actually scary big.

And nice pronunciation of Newfoundland, by the way. A lot of people say Newfoundland,

and it's a bit of a source spot with us locals. That is Newfoundland native Luke Quentin.

And I want to take us to a different part of the island to a little town on the northeastern

side called Gander. Now looking back, I was all of 20 years old at the time, though I thought I was

ancient. It's Christmas Eve, 1972, and Ian Blackmore is working. My name is Ian Blackmore,

and I was a photographer with the Gander beacon after I finished high school, before I went to college

in Toronto. Ian's coworker Gerald Vokey was an editor on the same local paper. He's going to

help tell this story. It was Christmas Eve, and her mother was, you know, getting things ready

for Santa Claus. Gerald was home that day in 1972. His family is getting ready for Christmas,

and he wanted to get his daughter out of the house. So they decided to go hang out at the local

airport. As you do. As you do, when you live in a tiny town in Canada, and the airport is the

best thing around. Also, this is not a normal airport, but we'll get to that soon. You never

knew with the airport being up there who might come through at any given time, regardless of the

hour of the day or at night or whatever. And when Gerald got to the Gander airport, he started

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