Free Republic

(CNN) -- The idea that Soviet fighter jets would shoot down a Boeing 747 airliner seems shockingly unbelievable. Two-hundred sixty-nine innocent people died in a largely forgotten Cold War attack that took place exactly 30 years ago this weekend. On a sultry August night in 1983 at New York's JFK airport, Alice Ephraimson-Abt, a brilliant, 23-year-old, blue-eyed blonde, was about to board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 for Seoul, South Korea, halfway around the world. For one last time, she held her father, New Jersey businessman Hans Ephraimson-Abt, before saying goodbye. "There were hugs and I-love-yous," her father, now 91,...

A MAN on a September 11 flight from Brisbane to the US used the aircraft's in-flight chatroom to tell his fellow passengers "I have a bomb". Philip Kirsch, 21, yesterday pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Magistrates Court to a charge of making threats regarding aviation security after his "joke" onboard V Australia flight 007 to Los Angeles on Thursday. Commonwealth prosecutor Sara Parga yesterday told the court that the flight captain took the threat very seriously – particularly because it was the anniversary of the airliner-based terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon in 2001. The fact that...

History Channel 7pm CST,"Secrets of The Black Box". 1983 shootdown of Korean #007 over Sakhalin Island. This program is reported to have new material.