Too Much Nick

Wow, am I the only young person who never heard about Flight 007 before? Soviet jets shot down a civilian airliner in 1983 after it strayed into USSR airspace, killing 269 people including a U.S. Representative.

The Soviets (who at first didn’t admit to shooting down the plane) maintained that the U.S. was testing them, and that they’d also detected a U.S. spy plane. (They also claim the civilian 747 ignored several warnings and orders from interceptor planes.) The U.S. banned the Soviet airline from landing in the country for the next three years. (This made some people consider moving UN headquarters to another country.)

The upside, though, is that Reagan ordered the military to open up the soon-to-be-launched GPS to civilians.