On July 17, 1996, a Boeing 747 exploded in midair off the coast of Long Island. The flight from New York City to Rome with a stop in Paris broke apart and fell into the ocean below. The 230 people onboard Trans World Airlines Flight 800 perished.
As quickly as the wreckage plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, questions arose. Conspiracy theories took shape.
Twenty-five years later, the questions and conspiracies live on.
Following a four-year, $40 million investigation – the longest in the history of the National Transportation Safety Board – board officials concluded an electrical failure ignited fuel vapors in a nearly empty tank in the belly of the jet.
Theories that Flight 800 may have been destroyed by a bomb, missile or meteor have nonetheless lingered
