On December 21st, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 flying from Frankfurt to Detroit via London Heathrow and New York JFK airports, exploded some 40 minutes after taking off from London.
Much of the Boeing 747’s wreckage fell on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 people aboard the aircraft died, along with 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie who were killed when the wing box section fell on Sherwood Crescent and exploded, destroying houses and leaving a crater 47 metres (or 154 feet) long.
The cause of the explosion was determined to be a Libyan terrorist bomb hidden within a cassette tape recorder in a suitcase in the hold. A memorial to the victims stands in Dryfesdale Cemetery about a mile west of Lockerbie, and a garden of remembrance was created in Sherwood Crescent where a memorial plaque bears the names of seven of the street’s victims.
