>What are the criteria for an event to be important? Shear numbers of those killed, �media opinion� or what?

Believe it or not, the same weird criteria held in the communist Yugoslavia back then. If fifty people died in the same city the same day, they get their obituaries, paid by their families and friends. If they happened to be in the same bus, they made the front page. If they died in the same coal mine, they not only got the front page, they got fund raising for their families, stipends for their kids etc. I thought it had something to do with collectivism, i.e. if you do something together with a collective, you make more impact.

But now I see it's pretty much the same here - if 2000 people die in traffic accidents around the country, it's statistics. If they die in the same building downtown, it's a reason to go to war.

BTW, Monty Python was the British pilot in WWII, who was the champion of 'friendly fire'. He downed 40 British planes.