On this day in 1961, a Douglas DC-6 flying for the United Nations came down in forest near Ndola, in what was then Northern Rhodesia, on a night approach. All sixteen people aboard were killed: the crew, the security staff, the aides, and the Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold. He was on his way to talks about a ceasefire in Katanga, during the Congo crisis, and the talks did not happen.
Three official inquiries were held, and none of them reached a conclusive finding on the cause. Historians have returned to the question many times since, and it remains open.
Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Hammarskjold, who had been dead for some weeks by then. The front page below, from the Evening Star in Washington, carries the news across the top of the paper, with a small map underneath showing Leopoldville, Katanga, and Ndola, so that readers could find the place. Most of them had never heard of it before that morning.
Among his papers was a small notebook of dated reflections, which appeared after his death as Vagmarken, or Markings, and turned out to be a private devotional record kept over decades. He had described it as a kind of negotiation with himself and with God, and had not meant it for readers.
The aircraft was a Douglas DC-6B registered SE-BDY, named Albertina, chartered from Transair Sweden, and her flight crew were Swedish airline men who had been flying UN work in the Congo for months. They are named on the memorial at Ndola alongside the Secretary-General and his staff.