While serving as the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Laurence Steinhardt was killed in a plane crash on March 28, 1950. The two-engine C-47 transport plane caught fire just a few minutes after taking off from Ottawa en route Washington, D.C. It was carrying six people when it crashed into a snow-covered farm just eight miles southeast of Ottawa, leaving only one survivor, who parachuted out of the plane. The 57-year-old Steinhardt reportedly refused to jump. Steinhardt had previously served as ambassador to Peru, Turkey, the USSR and Czechoslovakia.