Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17's painful end was not the first of its kind.
The tragedy that resulted in 298 deaths last week was just one of many commercial passenger planes that have been shot down out of the sky. Here's a list of history's other tragic civilian plane attacks:
1940: Finnish Junkers Ju 52 shot down by Soviet Bombers during peacetime between Finland and the Soviet Union; killed nine people on board.
1942: KNILM Douglas DC-3, carrying war refugees from Java, shot down by a Japanese aircraft that were attacking Broome, Australia; crashed in Australia and killed four of the 12 people onboard.
1943: BOAC flight traveling from Portugal to England shot down by Germans, theoretically for carrying British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, while another theory suggested it was carrying British spies; killed seven passengers, one of them being British actor Leslie Howard, who was suspected of being one of the spies.
1954: Cathay Pacific DC-4 traveling from Bangkok to Hong Kong shot down by fighter planes from the People's Republic of China due to the C-54 being the military version of the Douglas DC-4, and the plane flying in a commercial passenger run; killed 10 people.
1955: An El Al Constellation traveling from Vienna to Tel Aviv shot down in Bulgaria after straying in Bulgarian air space and refusing to land; killed 58 passengers and crew members.
1973: Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 traveling from Tripoli to Cairo shot down by Israeli cannon after drifting across the Suez Canal and over the Sinai Peninsula (Israeli territory at the time) because of a sandstorm and mechanical issues; killed 108 of 113 people on board
1978: Korean Air Lines Flight 902 shot down after violating Soviet airspace; killed 2 of the 107 people onboard.
1978: Air Rhodesia Flight 825 shot down by guerilla fighters during the Rhodesian Bush War; the guerilla fighters found 10 people who were still alive after the crash and executed them. Eight people on board survived.
1983: KAL Flight 007 traveling from New York City to Seoul, deviating from its planned route after taking off from Alaska, shot down by three Soviet Su-15 fighters after entering Soviet air space and a misunderstanding of climbing to conserve fuel for evasive action; killed all 269 people on board.
1986: Sudan Airways Fokker F-27 was reported to have been shot down by the SPLA militants in Sudan who announced about two weeks earlier that it would shoot down all unauthorized military or civilian aircraft, accusing the government of using them for transporting soldiers and weapons; killed all 65 passengers and crew members on board.
1987: Air Malawi 7Q-YMB shot down while entering Mozambique air space during the country's civil war; killed 10 passengers and crew members.
1988: Iran Air flight 655 traveling from Bandar Abbas to Dubai shot down by a U.S. Warship off the coast of Iran, having been mistaken for a hostile Iranian Air Force F-14 fighter jet; killed all 290 people on board.
1993: Air Georgia's Tupolev Tu-154 reported to have been shot down by a heat-seeking missile by rebels in Abkhazia (disputed Georgia territory) while carrying Georgian soldiers; killed 108 of the 132 passengers and crew members on board.
2001: Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 traveling from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, one month after the 9/11 attacks, shot down by a radar-guided S-200 missile launched during military exercises in Ukraine after missing its drone target; killed 78 people.
2007: Lionair Flight LN 602 crashed into the ocean off Sri Lanka; the Tamil Tiger rebels were blamed for the crash; killed 55 people.
