Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground. The Boeing 747, flying from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, was destroyed when a bomb was detonated in its forward cargo hold. 
The plane crashed in Lockerbie 38 minutes after taking off from London. Two Libyans -- Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah -- were tried for the bombing. Al Megrahi was found guilty in 2001 and sentenced to at least 27 years in prison. Fhimah was found not guilty. 
American and British investigators found fragments of a circuit board and a timer in the wreckage. Over three years, investigators would question more than 15,000 people and collect thousands of pieces of evidence. 
Investigators confer at the crash site two days after the tragedy. In July 1990, the British Civil Aviation Authority's Air Investigation Branch officially reported that an explosive device caused the crash. 
The body of Kenneth Raymond Garczynski, of North Brunswick, New Jersey, is removed from a plane December 28, 1988, at JFK Airport. Garczynski was the first of the 189 Americans killed in Flight 103 to be returned. 
U.S. President Ronald Reagan pauses at Los Angeles International Airport to comment on the explosion. In 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya over Libya's refusal to hand the suspects over for trial in a Scottish court. Those sanctions were suspended in 1999 when Libya turned the men in. 
Al Megrahi is escorted before appearing at the Supreme Court in Tripoli, Libya, for a hearing in February 1992. Nearly 10 years later, in January 2001, he was found guilty in a Scottish court. 
On the 10th anniversary of the bombing, a woman pays her respects in the Garden of Remembrance at Dryfesdale Cemetery in Lockerbie. 
Fhimah, left, walks with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Tripoli on February 1, 2001, a day after being acquitted. 
The reconstructed remains of Pan Am Flight 103 lie in a warehouse in Farnborough, England, on January 15, 2008. 
The Rev. John Mosey, right, leaves the Edinburgh High Court in August 2009 as Scottish ministers wrangled over whether to let an ailing al Megrahi return home to die in Libya. Al Megrahi would be released from prison on compassionate grounds due to his terminal prostate cancer. 
Al Megrahi gets a hug from Seif al-Islam el-Gadhafi, Moammar Gadhafi's son, after he was released from prison on August 20, 2009. Though he was given just months to live, al Megrahi died nearly three years later, on May 20, 2012. 
- Services are held in the United States and Britain to remember those killed
- It's been 25 years since Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland
- Syracuse University remembers 35 of its students who were on the plane
- Prime Minister David Cameron says memories of the 270 dead "have not dimmed"
(CNN) -- One by one, surviving family members and friends stepped up to a podium in Arlington National Cemetery. Before them were short lists of names, which included their loved ones -- fathers, sisters, sons and more. Slowly, they read the names, each one punctuated with a ring of a bell, to honor and remember who was lost.
A quarter of a century ago Saturday, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in the evening skies above Lockerbie, in Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 more on the ground.
Events Saturday in the United States and Britain marked the 25th anniversary of a bombing that devastated families on both sides of the Atlantic. It remains the deadliest act of terrorism on British soil.
At Arlington, a crowd used to gathering in bitter cold to remember this day each year sat beneath unseasonably warm Virginia skies. They heard from dignitaries, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell.
Pan Am Flight 103 bombing remembered And they paid tribute to their collective loss, their fight for justice and aviation security reform, and their sense of community -- not just with each other, but with those in Lockerbie.
"You created light out of darkness, and out of that light has come a lasting legacy," said former FBI Director Robert Mueller. "We mark your strength... May the thought of your loved ones bring a smile to your lips."
A bagpiper honored the anniversary with "Amazing Grace." Children placed flowers at the cemetery's Lockerbie Cairn. A wreath was laid and taps was played. The explosion left 189 Americans dead.
Across the Atlantic, services of remembrance were held Saturday evening at Westminster Abbey in London and at Dryfesdale Church in Lockerbie.
The anniversary was also marked at Syracuse University in New York, which was especially hard hit by the disaster.
"Today marks the 25th anniversary of the tragic crash of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a press statement. "That day, 270 innocent lives, including 35 students from Syracuse University who were returning home for the holidays, were taken from us. As we commemorate those we lost in this horrific terrorist attack, the families and loved ones of the victims are in the thoughts and prayers of all New Yorkers. Our state and nation will never forget their loss."
The service, in the university's Hendricks Chapel, started at 2:03 p.m. ET, the time the bomb exploded (7:03 p.m. in Scotland), and was scheduled to include the recitation of a specially composed "Common Prayer for Peace."
Composed jointly by Hendricks Chapel Dean Tiffany Steinwert and the Rev. Sandy Stoddart of Lockerbie, it includes these lines: "Rising up from the ashes of tragedy, we proclaim our commitment to creating a better, more just world."
Remembrance services were also planned at the university's Lubin House in New York City.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron, in a statement, paid tribute to the "fortitude and resilience" of those affected by the bombing and said it demonstrated how "terrorist acts cannot crush the human spirit."
He said, "Though 25 years have passed, memories of the 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 Lockerbie residents who lost their lives on that terrible night have not dimmed.
"Over the last quarter of a century, much attention has been focused on the perpetrators of the atrocity. Today, our thoughts turn to its victims and to those whose lives have been touched and changed by what happened at Lockerbie that night."
Cameron said a strong bond between the town of Lockerbie and Syracuse University, which offers scholarships to two Lockerbie students each year, represented a "lasting and optimistic legacy" that had emerged from tragedy.
After a three-year investigation, U.S. and British investigators indicted two Libyans for murder in the bombing of the New York-bound Boeing 747. Only one, Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was convicted.
Megrahi died last year in Libya, having been released from prison in Scotland in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he had terminal cancer.
Libya agreed in 2003 to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the bombing victims, although its late leader, Moammar Gadhafi, always remained cagey about admitting official Libyan involvement in the bombing.
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