Perception, Reality, Tragedy...

Here in England, Saturday 15th April 1989, a football match kicked off at 3pm. The FA cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. During the next six minutes 96 Liverpool fans were to die. And it occurred, partly, because of perception.
Police, at the time, were obsessed with controlling football's scourge - hooliganism. Visiting Liverpool supporters to the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield were herded through an underground tunnel into barricaded 'pens'. As the numbers increased and people piled up against old fashioned turnstiles, police opened a main exit gate to allow other fans in from outside the ground. The perception, perhaps, was that the dangerous crush at the turnstiles could be relieved. Next, the police perceived an attempt at pitch invasion, the 'bete noire' of hooliganism. A policeman shut an emergency gate at the front of the pens as it was pushed open. Other policemen shouted to "push back". Perception was, that hooliganism and pitch invasions were to be avoided....and this crowd was trying, desperately, to push out onto the pitch. Hooliganism and pitch invasion to be avoided...
... at all costs?....
BUT: What was to be the cost of this mistaken thinking...?
BUT: this was no 'rush for the pitch'. Instead a crush to the death. Fans weren't wanting to 'invade', to play havoc. They wanted to survive. Crushed against the wire netting, blue faces, tongues were seen lolling out, eyes bulging. People vomited. People hemorraged. People died. Bodies piled against bodies, many were the children and the young. Meanwhile the match continued for six minutes. 96 people perished. Parents went home that day, forever to be without the youngsters they had arrived with.
Even after the tragedy, perception continued to cloud reality, with newspapers falsely blaming drunken fans ("animals"), and fans "rioting outside the gate" (again, all wrong).
Two days ago, on Wednesday, exactly 20 years after the carnage, the city of Liverpool came to a dignified standstill at 3.06pm, its bells solelmly chiming 96 times for the victims of.. Reality vs. Perception...

I tell my children all the time: Things are not always what they seem. Look before you leap, Stop before you think...