Plane Crash Survival
On 17 February 1959, the Turkish Airlines aircraft Vickers Viscount Type 793, registration TC-SEV, carrying Adnan Menderes and a party of government officials on a special flight from Istanbul to London Gatwick Airport crashed a few miles short of the runway, near Rusper, Sussex in heavy fog and caught fire. Nine of the 16 passengers and 5 of the 8 crew lost their lives. Menderes, sitting in the back part of the plane, survived the accident almost uninjured and was hospitalized at The London Clinic 90 minutes after receiving first aid from Margaret Bailey, a local resident who rushed to the crash site.
He was on his way to sign the London Agreements on the Cyprus issue with the British Premier Harold Macmillan and Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, which gave the three sides the right to intervene in Cyprus in case peace is broken by any of the parties.
Menderes signed the London Agreement on 19 February 1959 in the hospital. He returned home on 26 February 1959 and was welcomed by even his arch-rival İsmet İnönü and a huge crowd.
Read more about this topic: Adnan Menderes
Famous quotes containing the words plane, crash and/or survival:
“As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.”
—Desmond Morris (b. 1928)