Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War. The aircraft, a Vickers Viscount, was flying Air Rhodesia's scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba. Soon after its takeoff, ZIPRA guerrillas launched a Soviet-made Strela 2 surface-to-air missile at the plane. Attempting a belly landing in a cotton field west of Karoi, the plane hit an unseen ditch, cartwheeled, and exploded. Of the 52 passengers and four crew, 38 died in the crash. The insurgents then massacred 10 survivors with automatic gunfire. Joshua Nkomo, the ZIPRA leader, publicly claimed responsibility for the missile attack (but not for the massacre) on the BBC's Today programme the same evening, saying the aircraft had been used for military purposes. Most Rhodesians, black and white, saw the attack as an act of terrorism. Martial law and a fierce white Rhodesian backlash followed, even though few black Rhodesians supported the attack. Five months later, ZIPRA shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 827 in a similar incident.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Rhodesia_Flight_825
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
863:
Arab–Byzantine wars: The Byzantine Empire decisively defeated the Emirate of Melitene in the Battle of Lalakaon, beginning the era of Byzantine ascendancy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lalakaon
1189:
Richard the Lionheart was crowned King of England in Westminster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England
1783:
The Peace of Paris formally ended the states of war between United States, France, Spain and Great Britain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Paris_(1783)
1941:
The Holocaust: SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch first used the pesticide Zyklon B to execute Soviet POWs en masse at Auschwitz; eventually it was used to kill about 1.2 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B
1991:
A fire killed 25 people locked inside a burning chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_chicken_processing_plant_fire
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
earwitness: A witness who gives evidence of what he or she has heard. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/earwitness
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet … this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times. --Louis Sullivan https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan