On a peace mission to the Congo, his plane dropped out of the sky

In the early morning hours of Sept. 18, 1961, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was on a flight to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), to negotiate a cease-fire to a civil war in the newly independent Republic of Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Hammarskjöld’s plane, the Albertina, crashed minutes before starting its final descent to Ndola Airport, killing 15 of the 16 people on board, including Hammarskjöld. The one survivor, an American security officer, died of his injuries