Frank first told you about the amazing memorial to Flight 772 in the desert of Niger more than four years ago, but it’s been making the news again so I thought it’d be worth taking another look at it.
First, and perhaps most importantly, the photos going around online are completely real! The memorial is stunning and enormous, and can easily be seen from Google Earth.
Flight 772 was scheduled to travel from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo to Paris back in 1989, but a Libyan bomb took out the plane and killed all aboard. Eighteen years later, some of the families of the 170 people on board went out and created the memorial.
The memorial is more than 200 feet in diameter, with stone and mirrors that were trucked in from 70km away. You can see it for yourself in Google Earth by loading this KMZ file.
In his original story, Frank referenced readers over to an excellent summary of the crash and memorial over on Google Sightseeing. In addition, this recent story on ViralNova gives additional detail about it, including many ground-level shots of the memorial and its construction.
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.