It was in the 40s or 50s when an ex-British military plane, something like a converted Lancaster, took off for a shortish flight with about 8 or 10 people on board in South America. The place wasn’t equipped with radio but did have a morse code operator on board whose job it was to communicate with the airports at regular intervals. The experiences pilots had made this little trip many times before. The weather was normal and the plane was in good shape. Nearing the end of the trip, the morse code operator had received the strange message “STENDEC”. This was the morse code guy on the ground who got this odd message from the plane in response to his message to them. This operator on the ground didn’t know what the hell “STENDEC” was supposed to mean and sent back a message asking for a repeat. The man on the ground received the word “STENDEC”again in morse code and then nothing. And that was the last anyone heard of the plane. For the next 50 years nobody could figure out what had happened to the plane or what that last bizarre message meant. Sometime in the 1990s, wreckage of the plane was finally found, but still no one has a clue what the message “STENDEC”was supposed to mean. In the 60s and 70s, the word was a bit of a cult icon. There have been things like a UFO magazine and a band or two called Stendec. A typical website dealing with the word and the story is: www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/vanished_stendec.html (by Timo)