December 21, 1988: The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103

December 21, 1988: Pan Am Flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. It is one of the most notorious cases of terrorism to date, and remains the deadliest ever to occur in the British Isles.

A Boeing 747, it had taken off from Frankfurt, Germany at 4:19 PM, and stopped over at Heathrow Airport in London at 5:40. At 6:25, it took off again, heading for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. After a refueling, it would then have taken off for Detroit, its final stop.

But at 7:03 PM, Greenwich Mean Time -- 2:03, U.S. Eastern Time -- the plane exploded over Lockerbie, about 15 miles northwest of the Scotland-England "border," 74 miles south of Edinburgh, 72 miles southeast of Glasgow, and 341 miles northwest of Central London.

The bombing and crash claimed the lives of all 259 individuals on board the plane, and 11 people on the ground below. The victims were citizens of 21 countries. Of those killed, 190 were United States citizens, making the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 the deadliest terrorist attack against American civilians prior to September 11, 2001. It remains the deadliest attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

The bombing didn't just kill 270 people. Essentially, it killed Pan American World Airways as well: Already in financial trouble, Pan Am never recovered, and went out of business on December 4, 1991, just under 3 years later.

The bombing hung over the Christmas season in both America and Britain. On December 23, 2 days later, reports surfaced that the U.S. Embassy in Finland received bomb threats against a Pan Am flight. On December 28, 5 days after that, British investigators reported that a bomb in the luggage compartment caused the explosion.

The bombing came 2 1/2 years after President Ronald Reagan retaliated for Libyan terrorist attacks that had killed American soldiers stationed in Europe, by bombing targets in Libya, including a palace owned by dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Conservatives used to tell me that once Reagan bombed Libya, Gaddafi left Americans alone. He did – until he gave Reagan, who was to leave office a month later due to term limits, something dictators don't officially have, this going-away present.

Arrest warrants were issued for two Libyan nationals in November 1991. After protracted negotiations and United Nations sanctions, on April 5, 1999, Gaddafi handed over the two men for trial at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands. On January 31, 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was found guilty of 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing. He remains the only person ever convicted of involvement. The other man handed over, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was found not guilty, and released.

On November 2, 2009, having been diagnosed with cancer, the Scottish government released him on compassionate grounds. He had been in custody for 10 1/2 years, for murdering 270 people. He lived until May 20, 2012.

In 2003, Gaddafi accepted Libya's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, and paid over $1 billion dollars in compensation to the families of the victims, a very unusual outcome for a terrorist bombing. He maintained that he had never personally given the order for the attack.

He finally answered for his crime on October 20, 2011. His former Minister of Justice, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, claimed that Gaddafi had personally ordered the attack.

As of December 21, 2022, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah is still alive.

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December 21, 1988 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was in midweek, and there were no college bowl games that day. There were 6 games in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Dallas Mavericks, 122-120 in overtime at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Boston Celtics, 115-114 at the Boston Garden.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Washington Bullets, 98-82 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Charlotte Hornets, 112-100 at the Charlotte Coliseum.

* The Seattle SuperSonics beat the Miami Heat, 109-101 at the Miami Arena.

* And the San Antonio Spurs beat the Sacramento Kings, 125-107 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.

And there were 8 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 5-2 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New Jersey Devils and the Winnipeg Jets played to a tie, 5-5 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat their Provincial rivals, the Quebec Nordiques, 6-4 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Boston Bruins beat their fellow New Englanders, the Hartford Whalers, 4-3 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 6-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Washington Capitals beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 4-3 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Edmonton Oilers, 3-1 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.

* And The Los Angeles Kings beat the Minnesota North Stars, 8-6 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

December 4, 1991: The Fall of Pan Am

December 4, 1991: Pan American Airways goes out of business. So much for one of America's airborne "flag carriers."

It was founded on March 14, 1927 in Key West, Florida, by U.S. Army Air Corps officers Henry "Hap" Arnold, Carl Spaatz and John Jouett. Arnold would go on to become a 5-Star General of the U.S. Army, and, following the U.S. Air Force's separation from the Army in 1947, the only 5-Star General it has ever had.

Pan Am outgrew its role as a mail carrier, and in 1929, it began flying passengers up and down the Americas, North and South. In 1937, Pan Am Clipper planes began service to Europe. On March 7, 1963, the 808-foot-high, 59-story Pan Am Building opened in Midtown Manhattan. On February 7, 1964, a Pan Am Boeing 727-321, Clipper Defiance, took The Beatles from Heathrow International Airport in London to the newly-renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. In 1966, Pan Am peaked at 6.7 million passengers, going to 86 countries, and billed itself as "the World's Most Experienced Airline."

Director Stanley Kubrick chose Pan Am as the brand for the "Space Clipper" taking passengers to the Moon in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. No one had any idea that, in 2001, Pan Am would no longer exist, or that Americans wouldn't be going to the Moon -- or that the most prominent use of American airliners that year would be for terrorism. And in 1982, the film Blade Runner, set in 2019, showed ads for Pan Am in downtown Los Angeles.

The golden age ended with the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. As the 1970s wore on, Pan Am sought mergers with American Airlines, Eastern Air Lines, Trans World Airlines (TWA) and United Airlines, but they were threatened with antitrust lawsuits from the federal government. In 1980, with no objection from the feds, they bought the bankrupt National Airlines. This turned out to be the dumbest thing they could have done, as they assumed National's debts, too.

In 1981, they sold the Intercontinental Hotel chain, and sold the Pan Am Building to Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife), though they kept their headquarters there. Pan Am sold their Pacific fleet and their hub at Tokyo-Narita International Airport in 1985. That same month, a Transport Workers Union (TWU) strike began, costing them a lot of money.

In 1987, they bought Ransome Airline, rebranded it as Pan Am Express, and turned it into a Northeast shuttle service: New York to Washington and New York to Boston. This didn't work, either. That same year, a takeover bid by a company whose executives included financier and eventual convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein failed. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 was a blow from which they never recovered. They tried to buy Northwest Airlines in 1989, but failed.

The airline's doom came with the rising oil costs of the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. Delta Airlines bought Pan Am out, and phased the name out on December 4, 1991. Eastern, in operation since 1926, had also shut down that year, on January 18, its assets split between purchases by American Airlines and Continental Airlines.

In 1993, MetLife renamed the Pan Am Building the MetLife Building, even though there were already 2 other buildings with that name in Manhattan. The building has now had the MetLife name longer than the Pan Am name.

In 2011, ABC began broadcasting the drama series Pan Am, set in 1963, and based around pilots and flight attendants for the airline. Despite starring Christina Ricci and an as-yet-unknown-in-America Margot Robbie, the show failed to tap into the nostalgia for 1960s naughtiness that made AMC's Mad Men popular, was grounded after just 14 episodes.

In 2022, Pan Am's historical records and trademarks were acquired by CSX Corporation, which also holds the rights to such defunct companies as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O or "Chessie System"), the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N).

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December 4, 1991 was a Wednesday. Reality Winner, the Air Force officer imprisoned for leaking information about Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, was born on this day.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 7 games played in the NBA:

* The Boston Celtics beat the Miami Heat, 124-97 at the Boston Garden.

* The Charlotte Hornets beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 124-106 at the Charlotte Coliseum.

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Orlando Magic, 124-115 at the Orlando Arena. Clyde Drexler led all scorers on the day with 34 points.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Indiana Pacers, 114-108 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 108-102 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Washington Bullets, 101-74 at the brand-new Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

* And the Los Angeles Clippers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 92-81 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-0 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Hartford Whalers, 3-0 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-2 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Winnipeg Jets beat the Buffalo Sabres, 5-4 at the Winnipeg Arena.

January 11, 1943: The 1st Presidential Flight

January 11, 1943: For the 1st time, the President of the United States flies in an airplane.

Theodore Roosevelt flew about an early Wright Brothers plane in St. Louis on October 11, 1910, but he was already out of office. On July 1, 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew to from New York to Chicago to accept his nomination at the Democratic National Convention, but he wasn't President yet.

He was the President on January 11, 1943, when FDR and his entourage showed up at the Pan American airways base in Miami, to board the Dixie Clipper, a Boeing 314 "flying boat," flying to Bathurst, Gambia. From there, the plane refueled, and flew to Morocco for the Casablanca Conference, so FDR could meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Britain, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, whom neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had previously met.

For his flight to the Yalta Conference in early 1945, the Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster for Presidential transport duty. The VC-54C aircraft, nicknamed the Sacred Cow, included a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and a retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. But he used it only that once before his death.

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January 11, 1943 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were scheduled in the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.