It is eerie to think that those who stood at the windows of the airport in Kuala Lumpur and watched the Malaysian flight MH370 depart for Beijing would possibly be the last humans to set eyes on the plane. Yes, accidents happen – we all know that when we board a plane.
But until lately we had an unshakeable belief that with modern radar, tracking devices, search equipment, and indestructible black boxes, we could nearly instantly discover any wreckage and begin piecing together what went wrong. No one had any thought that over a week later we might still know almost nothing of what had become of the 239 passengers and crew who disappeared in the most bizarre and mind-bending aviation disaster of our times.
Yet this certainty isn't something incredibly new. For centuries, those who watched the white sails of a ship disappear over the horizon, bearing loved ones on board to distant lands they knew little of and had never seen pictures of, traveling over barely charted waters, knew not only that they might never see the people on board again, but also that they might never know what had become of them.
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