http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 First off, holy shit. The Soviet Union once shot a commercial plane down? With hundreds of people and a US Congressman on-board?! And this was during the Cold War? I've never heard this before. And to add to the goat-getter, the last paragraph: wat. Add that to the list of hugely significant (and recent!) geopolitical events that I've never heard of.In addition, the event was one of the most important single events that prompted the Reagan administration to allow worldwide access to the United States military's GNSS system, which was classified at the time. Today this system is widely known as GPS.
Twice. Twice shot a commercial plane down. That's okay. It's not like the US has clean hands on this one. Flight 007 was one of the reasons cited as to why Mathias Rust was allowed to land a Cessna in Red Square; contrary to the narrative at the time ("Soviet air defenses were just that bad"), Soviet Air Defense followed him the entire time, just nobody wanted to be the guy responsible for blowing a Cessna out of the sky.