Friday Snippets and Soundbites

• Christian band Hawk Nelson's latest release, “Hawk Nelson Is My Friend,” dropped on Tuesday. The band is touring in support of the album. Check out their Web site to see when they're coming to a town near you. Don't forget to play the interactive board game!


• Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was in Memphis, Tenn., in support of African American sanitation workers who were on strike. On April 3, 1968, King delivered his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple in Memphis. He and his entourage were staying at the Lorraine Motel, and the civil rights leader was shot a day later as he stood on the balcony. A crowd of some 300,000 people attended King's funeral five days later. The Lorraine Motel is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

• Nearly a month after children found a parachute that could have been used by mysterious skyjacker D.B. Cooper, a man examining the chute said it isn't. D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb. After the plane landed safely in Seattle, he demanded $200,000 and four parachutes, then demanded he be flown to Mexico. He bailed out somewhere near the Oregon line. The man who provided the chutes the FBI gave to Cooper in 1971, Earl Cossey, examined the recently discovered parachute and said it was made of silk, while the ones he gave to the FBI were made of nylon.