SOURCE: TIMES NOW
A café owner in France has found a cache of preserved Indian newspapers published in 1966 from the melting glacier of Bossons on the Mont Blanc mountain range in western Europe. Newspaper copies with headlines such as ‘India’s First Woman Prime Minister’ (referring to the victory of Indira Gandhi in 1966) have been found, 54 years after the crash of an Air India plane there.
On January 24, 1966, an Air India Boeing 707 named ‘Kanchenjunga’ with 177 passengers and crew onboard had crashed into Europe’s highest mountain after a verbal flight control miscommunication. There were no survivors. Timothée Mottin, the owner of the cafe-restaurant La Cabane du Cerro, has now recovered nearly a dozen newspapers dating from January 20-21, 1966, near the Bossons Glacier in southeastern France.
La Cabane du Cerro, around 45 minutes by foot from the Bossons Glacier, is situated at an altitude of 1,350 metres above the French resort of Chamonix.
“They are drying now but they are in very good condition. You can read them,” 33-year-old Mottin has been quoted as saying by local French daily Le Daupine Libere.
In Mottin’s words, it is not “unusual”.
“Every time we walk on the glacier with friends, we find remains of the crash. With experience, you know where they are. They are being carried along by the glacier according to their size,” said the café owner.
He found copies of The Economic Times, The Hindu and National Herald among a dozen newspapers, which are “in a very good state, you can read them, unfold them”.
“Well, they are a bit torn, but in a very good state nonetheless.”
“As the glacier is advancing, it brings with it objects from the top of the Mont Blanc,” he added.
Mottin is planning to display the newspapers in the café to share it with visitors.
Notably, another Indian plane, the Malabar Princess, had crashed in the area in the year 1950, killing all 48 people aboard.
This is not the first time that someone has found something related to the 1966 Air India crash.
A bag of diplomatic mail, stamped ‘On Indian Government Service, Diplomatic Mail, Ministry of External Affairs’, was found in 2012. In 2013, a French climber had reportedly recovered a metal box containing sapphires, emeralds, and rubies worth between GBP 117,000 and GBP 230,000.
