I saw a documentary on it. There were two crashes like that, which caused the Boeing redesign. The original design had an issue in which the rudder would occasionally go in the opposite direction to that commanded by the pilot...so that, if the plane started left, and the pilot corrected right, the plane would go harder left...kind of a problem when the plane goes in the opposite direction that pilot commands. This resulted in the plane dive bombing into the ground. Had to be terrifying, to say the least. Thankfully, they fixed that problem.
Per the news yesterday, the incident in Philly is the second time they've had an engine come apart like that.
Regarding a minor aspect of the twitter story: Occasionally we remember the days without cell phones. Somehow, we dealt with not having 100% information all the time back then. Life was a little slower. My kids cannot comprehend it.