Edit: it occurs to me that you might legitimately not understand the downvotes. TWA 800 was the center of a lot of conspiracy theories about it being shot down by a US Navy missile, up to and including purported eyewitness accounts of a missile plume. Drawing the comparison between what looks likely to be a shootdown and a relatively mundane fuel tank explosion that spawned lots of conspiracy theories about a shootdown is a good way to sound like a conspiracy nut.
I recall the conspiracies got a lot of attention at the time, but I'm sure it all depends on how old you are and what you were actually watching, listening to, or reading.
That popped into my head as soon as I saw this story as I was reading about TWA 800 recently. Strange coincidence considering how rare an event this is.
It never ceases to surprise me how Americans can turn any international story into one about America or how it somehow links to an American event.
The TWA incident couldn't be less similar to this or have any real similarities at all. They both involve aircraft crashes, granted, but that is as far as it goes.
Oh and before you claim you weren't trying to Americanify this incident let me point out that there have been four commercial airline crashes on July 17th. TWA 800 is not even the most recent.
July 17th 2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashes at Congonhas-São Paulo Airport, Brazil, killing all 187 people on board and 12 on the ground. Yet you bring up one from 1964, why is that?
You're an ass. Nobody is trying to "Americanify" the event. They are simply remembering another event that is linked to the current one by coincidence. The anti-American knee-jerk reaction is 10x worse than any "Americanification".
Then why didn't they bring up one of the three other events, including more recent ones? Those also share that same coincidence.
It is clear that the only point in bringing up a plane crash in the 1960s as opposed to any of the others (including more recent ones, see 2007) was to make it more relevant to Americans.
Is it really an "anti-American knee-jerk" for calling people out for clearly trying to take international events and to twist them into a discussion about your own local issues/problems/incidents? It happens all the freaking time on here, and it is often by the same nationality trying to turn everything into a "well how does this apply to America?"
The TWA 800 plane crash referred to by the OC happened in 1996 (not in the 1960s). So a lot of Americans have memories of that event as well as the aftermath (which dragged on for years).
> twist them into a discussion about your own local issues/problems/incidents
Again, not really sure why this offends you so much. There may not be a lot of value in pointing out this particular coincidence, but it's certainly not intended to pull attention from the tragedy that just occurred. It's just...conversation. Isn't that why we're here on HN?
[Why the downvotes? Clearly stated _unrelated_. Just a stupid fact.]