Korean Air lines Shoot down incident

Here is an interesting, but tragic incident happened during the Coldwar era.

A Korean Air Lines Flight 902 (KAL902, KE902), a civilian airliner was involved in a shooting incident on April 20, 1978 near Murmansk, after it violated Soviet airspace and failed to respond to Soviet interceptors.

The pilots of the plane had mysteriously altered the route and came deep inside the Russian territory. Two and a half hours they were escorted by Russian jets but did not respond to any radio contact or visual contact attempts by the Russians. At last the Soviet military commanders ordered to shoot the plane down with as much accuracy as they could do. The jet plane of Russian army hit the Boeing with a missile cutting off the piece of its wing, so the Korean plane had to land after this. Two passengers were killed others got wounds as a result of an extremely fast landing to the frozen Russian lake in Karelia, Russia near Kem’ town. 107 passengers and crew survived in the accident.

According to the official Korean explanation, the pilots in their navigation calculations used the wrong sign of magnetic declination when converting between magnetic and true headings. This caused the plane to fly in an enormous right-turning arc, which eventually caused the aircraft to fly into Soviet airspace. Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 'Flagon' fighters were scrambled after the plane, which was identified as a military U.S. plane (RC-135, an aircraft that shares common ancestry with the 707, like many other U.S. military airplanes).

According to Soviet reports, the intruder repeatedly ignored commands to follow the interceptors. Su-15 pilot Capt. A. Bosov was ordered to shoot it down after trying to convince his superiors on the ground that the aircraft was not a military threat. He fired a pair of R-60 missiles, one of which caused heavy damage to part of the left wing of the Boeing 707 and punctured the fuselage, causing rapid decompression, and killing two of the 97 passengers. After being hit, the airliner descended into cloud and was lost by the Su-15s. At 23:05, 40 minutes after the missile strike, it was finally forced by another SU-15TM (piloted by Anatoly Kerefov) to land on the frozen Korpijärvi Lake, 250 miles (400 km) south of Murmansk and 20 miles (32 km) from the Finland border. The 107 survivors were rescued by Russian helicopters.

The passengers were released after two days, while the crew were held for investigation and released after they made a formal apology. The Korean pilots acknowledged that they deliberately failed to obey the commands of the Soviet interceptors. The Soviet Union invoiced Korea for $100,000 in caretaking expenses. The passengers were flown with a Pan Am B727 from Murmansk to Helsinki, Finland from which another Korean Air B707 took them to Seoul.

Chennai MGR memorial -one fine evening

These are a few pictures taken by me when I was strolling on the sands of Marina and down the sidewalks. Here I have posted only those taken at MGR memorial. How do they look in the view of my lens?

Kavipperarasu Vairamuthu, My favorite poet in Modern Tamil Literature

Mechnikoff, A great Russian Scientist.

( May 16, 1845, near Kharkiv, Ukraine – July 16, 1916, Paris)

Russian microbiologist, Nobel laureate, best remembered for his pioneering research into the immune system.

Some interesting facts:

-born in a village near Kharkov in the Russian Empire (now Kharkiv, Ukraine)
-His first wife, Ludmila Feodorovovna, suffered from tuberculosis, of which she died in 1873. Her death, combined with other problems, caused Mechnikov to unsuccessfully attempt suicide, taking a large dose of opium. He married again in 1875, and his second wife, Olga, caught typhoid in 1880, causing Mechnikov to again attempt suicide—this time by injecting himself with relapsing fever, which didn't kill him, but made him very ill.
-He became interested in the study of microbes, and especially the immune system. In 1882 he resigned his position at Odessa University and set up a private laboratory at Messina to study comparative embryology, where he discovered phagocytosis after experimenting on the larvae of starfish. His theories were radical: certain white blood cells could engulf and destroy harmful bodies such as bacteria. The ‘sophisticated’ microbe hunters in the West — Pasteur, Behring, etc. — scorned the Russian and his humble theory.
-Mechnikov also developed a theory that aging is caused by toxic bacteria in the gut and that lactic acid could prolong life. Based on his theory, he drank sour milk every day. He died in 1916 at 71 years of age (well above the average life expectancy at the time).
-It was the last of these works, along with Metchnikoff's studies into the potential life-lengthening properties of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) that inspired Japanese scientist Minoru Shirota to begin investigating the causal relationship between bacteria and good intestinal health. Convinced that a healthy balance of intestinal bacteria held the key to man's general well-being, Shirota dedicated his life and work to isolating a strain of LAB which would pass into the intestines, positively contributing to the balance of gut flora. In 1935, he succeeded in cultivating a unique bacterium, sufficiently robust to bypass the acidic environment of the stomach and enter the intestines directly. He placed this pioneering strain into a fermented milk drink in order to make its benefits accessible to all - this drink remains available worldwide today (in a recipe almost unchanged from Shirota's original formula) as the Yakult drink.

Source: Wikipedia

Some Interesting quotes

I came across a few quotes which I thought were interesting.
Here they are:

True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.
~ Larry Wall, Creator of Perl

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

When all else fails, men turn to reason.
~ Abba Eban

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
~ Mark Twain

The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
~ Thomas J. Watson

If you can't solve a problem, it's because you are playing by the rules.
~ Paul Arden

A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.
~ Robert Townsend

Insanity in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
~ Nietzsche

We, on our side, are praying to Him to give us victory, because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray to Him, too, for victory, believing they are right. What must He think of us?
~ Abraham Lincoln