I'd like to teach the world to sing

Something to think about next time your flight is delayed. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Our story today starts with bad weather in England half a century ago (January 18, 1971, to be exact) and a passenger jet from New York City that was headed to London but got diverted to Shannon, Ireland, as a result.

Everyone got off and slogged into the airport. The weather could lift at any time, so the passengers couldn’t stray far from the terminal…but the delay dragged on.

Nobody was happy.

Among the group that day was Bill Backer, a 45-year-old executive at the advertising agency McCann Erickson. He took a philosophical view: annoyed, but resigned. And eventually, as he later recalled, the mood lightened.

Backer watched some of the passengers who’d been the most irate at first; now they sat in the airport café, laughing at their shared predicament, eating snacks and drinking from glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

This turned into the moment of a lifetime for Backer. His job at McCann? Creative director on the Coca-Cola account. He’d been en route to London to link up with a music direc…