h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Which actress lost her life in a plane crash when returning from London to Manchester, and with whom had she struck up a very unlikely friendship?

I like setting these, but I'm usually rubbish at working them out.

This must have happened a while back, or I'd remember the event. Was it a commercial airliner or something like a Cessna?

Hmm...didn't Winston Churchill's mother die in a plane crash?

B

Sadly not Churchill's mother (was she an actress?)

Larger than a Cessna, Infie, but still a small aircraft. All 8 killed on this occasion.

I'll tell you that the crash made headlines, but nothing like as much as the friendship did.

Finally, I've been somewhat misleading in the question (but everything is correct)

Icy

In those days British Airways was two airlines. I imagine an internal flight would be BEA rather than BOAC. Most of the airline business was by the major national airlines. I'm wandering here.

Well, the actress who springs to my mind as the one with an unusual friendship was Coral Browne, who met Guy Burgess in exile in Moscow. Alan Bennett turned it into a screen play: "A Gentleman Abroad".

But that's so obvious that it's able.

Never mind.

B

You are starting to get a little warmer, Ben.

You are a long way off, Infie...

Struggling - I could do with a hint - what sort of sctress ?

OK, a big hint, then: someone who became an actress only after she hit the headlines with the unlikely friendship.

That's not the only misleading part of the question, though...

My first thought was that lion woman, er.. Born Free? I can't remember her name. Anyway, was either the actress or the friend an animal?

Nice thinking, but no, the 'actress' and her friend were human - no animals involved. Ben was getting close earlier with the friendship...

Further clue - the geography is somewhat misleading...

So is it manchester in the USA?

Is it that left eye lopez - no she was shot.

Aaliiyahh? (don't know the spelling.)

You're on the right track, thranjax...

Not left-eye lopez, though.

Not Aaliyah, either - her plane crashed in the Bahamas - see A16303727

Jane or June Thornton ?

Died in a crash with a Coventry City FC director - which is the only thing I know about her.

Not that one, McKay, and I'm having difficulty looking it up - she's not on IMDB under either of those names.

The crash took place in the US, not the UK...

So to summarise what you've correctly found so far, I'm looking for an American female who had a very unlikely friend in Moscow...

She found a Russian guy who had exactly the same name as she did?

And did the plane crash onto a town called 'Peace', perchance?

Sadly neither, but you've correctly spotted that peace is important...

Anything to do with the space station MIR?

No, not that, sorry. It was all down to earth...

I'll give you the decade: 1980s.