Jan 1, 2022
Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) (1998) Lukas Moodysson
January 1st 2022
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Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) (1998) Lukas Moodysson
January 1st 2022
Today in History: May 28
1987: Teen German pilot lands in Red Square
To the embarrassment of Soviet officials, Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square without authorization. Rust was freed by the Soviets the following year.
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Calendar sheet: 28 May 1987 — West German teenage hobby pilot lands on Red Square in Moscow
On May 28, 1987, 18-year-old German hobby pilot Mathias Rust landed on the Red Square in Moscow after passing the heavily guarded Soviet-Russian airspace.
Rust hired a Cessna 172 from his flight club in Hamburg, saying that he wanted to do a round trip over the North Sea. During a stopover, he removed the rear seat to gain more range. He then continued for the next two weeks with stops at the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Bergen (Norway), to Helsinki. From there, he continued, flying first to Leningrad (today St. Petersburg) and watched out for the railway station there. He then navigated along the railroad tracks to Moscow.
His first attempts to land on the Red Square failed because the square was crowded with people. Rust the decided to land on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge instead. Incidentially, the trolleybus lines were removed for maintenance on this very day, so a landing was possible. Rust then taxied onto the Red Square where he parked the plane on a parking lot for tourist buses and talked to people until he was arrested by the KGB.
Mathias Rust was convicted to 4 years of labor camp for hooliganism and disregard of aviation laws, but was released after 14 months in prison and immediately deported to Germany. The plane was bought by a German cosmetics company, which sold it later to Japan, where is was displayed in an amusement park. In 2009, the German Museum of Technology in Berlin bought the plane, restored it and put it on permanent display.
The Soviet air defense spotted Rust’s plane very soon and accompanied him with MiG-23 fighters, but did nothing to stop him for various organizational reasons. Incidentially, his landing on the Red Square happened on the Day of the Border Soldiers. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used the incident as a reason to fire a number of his opponents in the military in the largest turnover since Stalin’s purges, further securing his position.
Rust remained an instable person, being sentenced for attempted manslaughter for 2.5 years in prison after stabbing a female co-worker who refused to kiss him. He was also convicted for theft and fraud. Since then, he has led a fragmented life, financing himself at times as a professional poker player, analyst in Switzerland and founder of a yoga school.
A German comedy series circling around the fictional town of Stenkelfeld renamed Stenkelfeld Airport to Mathias Rust Airport.
May 28
In 1987, in one of the stranger episodes in the already-bizarre Cold War, West German teenager Mathias Rust landed a single-engine Cessna in Red Square in Moscow.
So it turned out that after 40 years of a tense standoff with NATO, Soviet air defenses could be easily breached by some schmuck in a recreational airplane.
It's pretty safe to say that several people lost their jobs over the incident.
Erica Carlson and Mathias Rust in Fucking Åmål, 1998.