Pan Am Flight 214, a Boeing 707, is struck by lightning and crashes near Elkton, Maryland, killing all 81 people on board.

Pan Am Flight 214 was a scheduled flight of Pan American World Airways from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia in the United States. On December 8, 1963, while flying from Baltimore to Philadelphia, the Boeing 707-121 crashed near Elkton, Maryland. All 81 passengers and crew on the plane were killed. The crash was Pan Am's first fatal accident with the 707, which it had introduced to its fleet five years earlier.

The Boeing 707 is an early American long-range narrow-body airliner, the first jetliner developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Developed from the Boeing 367-80 prototype, the initial 707-120 first flew on December 20, 1957. Pan Am began regular 707 service on October 26, 1958. With versions produced until 1979, the 707 is a swept wing quadjet with podded engines. Its larger fuselage cross-section allowed six-abreast economy seating, retained in the later 720, 727, 737, and 757 models.

Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on the ground. Following the lightning, the regions become partially or wholly electrically neutralized.

Elkton is a town in and the county seat of Cecil County, Maryland, United States. The population was 15,776 at the 2020 census, up from 15,443 in 2010. It was formerly called Head of Elk because it sits at the head of navigation on the Elk River, one of the five tributary rivers that flow into the north of the Chesapeake Bay, east of the Susquehanna River and North East River, and north of the Bohemia River, and Sassafras River. The town constitutes part of the Delaware Valley.