Today (December 21, 2018) marks the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie tragedy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103
I had taken the day off to get my car serviced and to do some Christmas shopping. First heard about the explosion on the local news station as I was heading home.
This was a huge deal in Detroit when I was a kid given it was the ultimate destination of the flight.
An SCA acquaintance of mine lost his brother.
I don't remember it. It would have been during my sophomore year of high school, right when we were battling another local pandemic that the local media kept smirking and grinning about.
One of my professors at Reading explained the local newspapers' incessant attempts at inserting the local area into any national or global tragedy by noting that one headline the day after the Lockerbie disaster read DOOMED PLANE FLEW OVER BERKSHIRE.
Whilst we're discussing December 21st's, I might note that today is also the shortest day of the year.
I don't remember this either, but I was 3 years old, so....
In light of my near photographic memories of where I was and what I was doing for other major historical events in that general time frame I find it quite astonishing that I don't remember much about this one. I mean, yes, I do remember seeing the news about it and the aftermath on TV, but I can't quite pin down any exact memories. I guess that it was during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college might have something to do with it. I see that this was a Wednesday, so I must have been at home (I would have come home from school the previous Friday).
Beyond the coverage this generated nationally and internationally, the fact that victims included a large group of Syracuse University students returning home from a semester abroad made it a bigger story around here. Being in college at the time at a school that really emphasized its study abroad opportunities, I remember that it led to a lot of discussion about the safety of students traveling in such programs.
A classmate's sister was on the Pan Am 103 flight. Didn't know her or her family very well, it was a large high school at the time (700 - 1000 graduates per year). Her name was Sarah Phillips.
This, the second Libyan state-sponsered act of terrorism on British soil, was the moment to act - to go and capture Gaddafi and bring him to justice. Instead the West waited so long that the low-level pawn that was the only one convicted for this atrocity had been released on compassionate grounds after serving a large part of his sentence, returning home to heroes welcome and taking far longer than those who released him thought to die.
A refugee that was born years after the bombing had time to grow up in South Manchester and then be old enough to request that the British Army trained him so he could go fight for other monsters to oust Cnl Wax Face, get radicalised by the terrorists and return home to show his gratitude by suicide bombing a bunch of teen girls. Inaction then might have been prudent then, but doesn't seem good in hindsight.