We at the Monkey Cage want to extend our condolences to the familiies of thse many Polish government officials, including President Lech Kaczynski, who perished in today´s “plane crash”:http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/10/poland.president.plane.crash/index.html?hpt=T1.
As political scientists, though, we must ask the following question: in terms of the sheer loss of life of high ranking governtnment officials, is this unprecedented? “According to the AP”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100410/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_plane_crash:
bq. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers