Plane Crash Memorial: Replacing Tragedy with Beauty + Awe

We want to share this story of awesome human accomplishment and the lengths to which families went to show duty to their lost loved ones.

18 years after a plane crashed in one of the most inaccessible places in the planet — the Tenere region of the Sahara Desert — the victims’ family built a memorial mostly by hand using dark stones to create a 200-foot diameter circle. Pieces of the destroyed plane were scavenged from the sand of the desert to be used in the memorial and 170 broken mirrors were placed around the circumference to represent each victim of the plane crash.

The memorial can be seen from Google Earth and Google Maps if you type in the coordinates 16°51’53″N 11°57’13″E.

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Nia James Kiesow

Nia James Kiesow

Nia James Kiesow likes culture, historical fiction, Japanese ramen, illustrating, and technology. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she now lives in Gramercy in NYC. Nia is currently the admin