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Pan Am Flight 103
Several books written about the explosion of PAA103 make the same point as this one published above.
December 1988 National Geographic: An all hologram cover. Holography which was the new technology that became the largest paradigm shift the security industry has ever seen. Tilted against the light, you see that a large chunk of glass, or ice, is falling from 'the fragile planet.' In this same month, Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland. An ad inside seemingly becomes a cryptic ad that calls that piece of glass 'the key to everything.'
I'm here on the left circa 15 years ago. I'm holding the glass rock, which I found near my house in Georgia circa 1968. This 'piece of junk' that I had found at the age of 6, wasn't allowed inside of our home by my parents, but the Hollis grandparents liked it as a piece of modern art, and they kept it at their place in Atlanta. On vacation back in 2007, a few replicas of the glass rock were seen outside of an abandoned building down the street from NBC Studios (barely legible in the background of the photo above).
Call the glass rock a 'gem' with this WORD SEARCH that was published on what would have been RTH, Jr.'s 65th anniversary with Delta Air Lines.
The one above reminds me of the glass rock, and gets a good bit of airplay on Georgia State University's radio station 88.5 FM. Very nice tune.
Later, click this graphic for McD jots.
Dad was employee with D.A.L. 8 years before I was born. He knew of the glass rock, but had no idea about its use in the world of "Intellectual Property Law." The word search below is an example:
The GLOBE word search puzzle above prioritized for me the construction of the short web tab you're looking at here. I've color coded three puzzle solutions on the illustration above. Yeah. It's all about the glass rock.
You'll have to figure out the nasty Dan Quayle box yourself. Dan was Vice-President elect when the December 1988 issue of National Geographic was in the mail to the subscribers. National Geographic was not yet available at newsstands. We think this puzzle was about Dan Quail's PET rock.
So, now you know a bit about the 'glass rock.' It's referred to in this Weekly World News puzzle that I retrieved on-line last month. Although the puzzle above implies differently, there wasn't really any troublesome 'jam' with my college abroad group back in 1981, but the same week that the puzzle above was published, I was on vacation with the University System of Georgia Studies Abroad students in Cozumel. We were kicked out of our hotel by Fidel Castro and his entourage.
Here's that same puzzle again. One can only speculate about what that 'N.C. THING' is. But, 'BRR..." it must have been cold. (for you readers from the UK, 'N.C.' is North Carolina, a state that borders Georgia) And who is Megrahi? Nearly 10 years later, he becomes the accused in the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland. That happened on December 21, 1988, while Ronald Reagan was the 'lame duck' president, and George Bush and Dan Quayle were waiting for their inauguration ceremonies. I remember I was watching TV that night when news interrupted regular programming and began reporting the explosion of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland. They reported that a group of students from U. of Michigan were aboard, and I remember thinking that my BUNAC co-worker in London from two years earlier now had plane crash victims in his college annual. Two years after the disaster, I started work at Delta Air Lines, and in 1992, as me and a few others in the office (including some former PAA employees) were downloading Pan Am engine data into the Delta systems, a new co-worker in the Engine Records Department mentioned that lots of students at his school, Syracuse University, were killed on PAA103. I argued with him that the students were from the University of Michigan, but he had it right. I believe the media had reported some of the details inaccurately that night. The routing for PAA103 was Malta, Frankfurt, London, New York, Michigan. A couple of years after the explosion, I'm sure that everyone in the aviation industry remembers that the two bombing suspects were former employees of Pan Am. Media reports like that are not forgotten when you never know who you've been assigned to work with. LOL. There was always a lot to talk about at the office in the early 1990's when updates to the Pan Am 103 explosion made the news. Anyway, below is the back cover of the all hologram December 1988 National Geographic magazine. Holography was the new technology that became the largest paradigm shift the security industry has ever seen.
In his essay The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde wrote that "life imitates art far more than art imitates life." The point here is Paul Erdman's 1986 novel, The Panic of '89. Like real life with the timing of Pan Am Flight 103 explosion, the novel opens in December 1988, and the novel mentions Ronald Reagan and the 'lame duck' weeks. Like real life with PAA103, prominent government officials die in an airplane crash. They were: CIA's Beirut Deputy Station Chief Matthew Gannon, Major Chuck McKee (DIA), Ronald Lariviere and Daniel O-Connor; security officers from the US Embassies in Beirut and Cyprus, respectively. Rumors of a fifth were never confirmed. Per internet sources, the U.S. government officials were looked at as primary targets for those who blew up PAA103. In the novel, three south American oil ministers died in the plane crash (they were also culprits). In real life with PAA103 investigators, the Swiss are big players. In the 1986 novel, the Swiss are big players. In real life, Abu Nidal is the primary suspect in the explosion of PAA103. This fact was published in Newsweek a month after the PAA103 explosion. In the 1986 novel, Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal are terrorists that boast of previous 'projects', including the 1988 explosion of an Israeli airliner (that never happened in real life 1988). Yes. Finance wizard Paul Erdman wrote the novel in 1986 and used their real names.
And in real life, I wonder if the stash of Pan Am 747 postcards below fell onto Lockerbie soil after the explosion. To the far right is a Pan Am 747 passenger that looks like my Dad, who retired from Delta Air Lines (where he was known as "Babe") four months after the explosion. That's his real photo inserted in the upper right hand corner.
So, the big international tribunal is over. Where does it go from here? Below is a photo of Geneva's time travel machine.
I doubt we'll ever get in and do it again. But most of this page is about the glass rock... the ice... the gem...
So I will begin my 'close out' of this page with a picture of another rock... gem... it's the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which went to Queen Victoria (one of my distant cousins) after British conquest of Pujab. The anagram is "OOO.. R.K.H. IN." This diamond was the Queen Mother's diamond (another distant cousin) and is currently with the rest of the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London. The Koh-i-Noor was featured in Agatha Christie's 1925 novel "The Secret of Chimneys." I am distantly related to the owners of this amazing 'rock.' When this little Pan Am tour you're taking is over, come back and click on the picture above to see something about me that they keep at Buckingham Palace. Remember to use your BACKTAB to return to this page.
I'll begin closing out this page with the timely copy of the Pop's Place comic that ran here in Atlanta on the same day that PAA103 exploded. Muammar Gaddafi eventually paid each of the victims families $10 million. In his essay The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde wrote that "life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
If the comic is too small to read, you need to be on your desktop computer. If you want a copy of Pop's Place, you can take a crisp photo of your computer's digital screen with an i-phone.
Finally here at the end. An old postcard from Letter Kenny is appropriate. Click the postcard above to send me an e-mail. Books on PAA103... scanned copies of your local word search puzzles up there in Bumblebuck... Mail them in... Click on the HOME TAB above to be taken to my home page where you read about Granddad Robert Thomas Hollis (anagram: "OL' BIRTH SHAM'S TO ROLE.") and his connection to the royals of Europe. This gives the reader deeper insight to the motives of the tabloid WORD SEARCH crew and the sometimes important espionage games that novelists like Dan Fesperman entertain with.
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WAIT!! Click ad below for much more on PAA103!
If you have been here before, you may recall that you had reached the end of the page. I HAVE MORE! Rather than closing out right now, click the Nextel ad below to be taken to some of the newspaper clippings that have been published through the years. You will need a desktop PC to read the articles. The next page starts with a recommendation for Steven Berry's novel, THE KING'S DECEPTION, which was framed around the release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi. Information on West Germany's October 1988 OPERATION AUTUMN LEAVES is there too. The Nextel ad below was published in May 2000, which was the same month the PAA103 trial began.
Click ad above for Page 2 on PAA103!
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