A friend told me to go to a certain
latitude and longitude on Google Maps. When I noticed it seemed to be in the
middle of an African desert, I thought he was just sending nonsense. But when I
zoomed in, my mind was blown. I noticed a tiny icon that looked like an
airplane.
So I did some more research and
discovered there’s an incredibly tragic and beautiful story behind
it. Here it is, from start to finish.
UTA
Flight 772 was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of
Congo to Paris CDG airport in France.
This is the flight path. UTA
Flight 772 was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of
Congo to Paris CDG airport in France. The flight never made it. All on board
perished.
Eighteen years later, families
of the victims gathered at the crash site to build a memorial.
Due to the remoteness of the
location, pieces of the wreckage could still be found at the site.
The memorial was created by
Les Familles de l’Attentat du DC-10 d’UTA, an association of the victims’
families along with the help of local inhabitants.
The memorial was built mostly
by hand and uses dark stones to create a 200-foot diameter circle.
The Tenere region is one of
the most inaccessible places on the planet. The stones were trucked to the site
from over 70 kilometers away.
The memorial was built over
the course of two months in May and June of 2007
170 broken mirrors,
representing each victim, were placed around the circumference of the memorial.
The memorial is anchored by
the starboard wing of the aircraft which was trucked to the site from 10 miles
away. Workers had to dig up the wing and empty it of sand.
The memorial was partly funded
by the $170 million compensation package provided by the Libyan government.
The completed memorial.
The memorial can be seen from
Google Earth and Google Maps
Six
Libyans were ultimately convicted of this terrorist attack. They used a
suitcase bomb to blow up the plane, which resulted in 155 passengers and 15
crew members meeting their demise.
Even
in the face of this tragedy, the families constructed this beautiful memorial
to never forget what happened. They will live on in their hearts, in the
desert, and even on Google Earth forever.
Source & UTA Flight 772 Wikipedia Page
