September 30, 2018
The Boeing 747 turns fifty years old today.
Smithsonian magazine has published an essay of mine about the plane for its “American Icon” feature. You can read it here. It appears in the magazine’s print version as well.
The longer, unabridged version is below.
FIFTY YEARS AGO, on the last day of September in Everett, Washington, the first Boeing 747 was rolled from the hangar. Onlookers were stunned. The aircraft before them, gleaming in the morning sunshine, was more than two-hundred feet long and taller than a six-story building.
An airplane of firsts, biggests, and superlatives all around, the 747 has always owed its fame mostly to feats of size. It was the first jetliner with two aisles — two floors, even! And enormous as it was, this was an airplane that went from a literal back-of-a-napkin drawing to a fully functional aircraft in just over two years — an astonishing achievement. //
Say what you want of the DC-3 or the 707 — icons in their own right — it’s the 747 that changed global air travel forever.
And it did so with a style and panache that we seldom see any more in aircraft design. Trippe isn’t the only visionary in this story; it was Boeing’s Joe Sutter and his team of engineers who figured out how to build an airplane that wasn’t just colossal, but also downright beautiful.
How so? “Most architects who design skyscrapers focus on two aesthetic problems,” wrote the architecture critic Paul Goldberger in an issue of The New Yorker some years back. “How to meet the ground and how to meet the sky—the top and the bottom, in other words.” Or, in Boeing’s case, the front and the back. Because what is a jetliner, in so many ways, but a horizontal skyscraper, whose beauty is beheld (or squandered) primarily through the sculpting of the nose and tail. Whether he realized it or not, Sutter understood this perfectly. //
The picture at the top of this article shows the prototype Boeing 747 on the day of its rollout from the factory in Everett. It was September 30th, 1968. I love this photo because it so perfectly demonstrates both the size and the grace of the 747. It’s hard for a photograph to properly capture both of those aspects of the famous jet, and this image does it better than any I’ve ever seen.
Across the forward fuselage you can see the logos of the 747’s original customers. The one furthest forward, of course, is the blue and white globe of Pan Am. Pan Am and the 747 are all but synonymous, their respective histories (and tragedies) forever intertwined. But plenty of other carriers were part of the plane’s early story, as those decals attest. Twenty-seven airlines initially signed up for the jumbo jet when Boeing announced production.
My question is, can you name them? How many of those logos can you identify?
On the thirtieth anniversary of the crash, a memorial was dedicated overlooking the Tenerife airport, honoring those who perished there. The sculpture is in the shape of a helix. “A spiral staircase,” the builders describe it. “a symbol of infinity.” Maybe, but I’m disappointed that the more obvious physical symbolism is ignored: early model 747s, including both of those in the crash, were well known for the set of spiral stairs that connected their main and upper decks. In the minds of millions of international travelers, that stairway is something of a civil aviation icon. How evocative and poetically appropriate for the memorial — even if the artists weren’t thinking that way.
But for three of Biden’s most illustrious predecessors — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe — obsequious deference to the chief executive was positively un-American. To make one man the center of the nation’s political life was antithetical to the Constitution and republicanism in the eyes of the three Jeffersonians.
In his newest book, “The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe,” historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman gives us an expansive yet highly detailed account of exactly how this trio of Virginians governed the nation and the legacy of republicanism they left behind. We might better understand how to tackle our own political ills by examining the example they set. //
Jefferson also decided to scrap his predecessors’ tradition of delivering the State of the Union address orally. Never comfortable with giving speeches anyway, Jefferson chose to submit his report in writing because he thought the annual address seemed like a “speech from the throne.” In his unpretentious style, Jefferson informed the people’s representatives that out of “principal regard to … the economy of their time,” he would not ask them to gather to listen to him.
Madison and Monroe followed suit, as did every president until Woodrow Wilson. For the Jeffersonians, the president’s job was to efficiently administer the government, not waste time with pompous speeches. ...
But the Jeffersonians weren’t only concerned with outward appearances. They also believed government policies needed to closely adhere to the country’s founding principles. Protecting freedom of speech, reducing the size of the military, and slashing federal spending were all on the Jeffersonians’ agenda. //
Contrast Monroe’s attitude to modern presidents who have never met a foreign crisis that couldn’t be solved by military intervention, or at least by the threat of it.
Needless to say, the political philosophy of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe was wildly different from that of today’s Republicans and Democrats. As the Jeffersonian dynasty came to an end in 1825, America was at peace, the federal government was small and its power modest, and the national debt was quickly being extinguished (it would be completely paid off in 1835, right on Monroe’s schedule).
America’s leaders have pushed the country further into dangerous confrontations with foreign powers, racked up trillions in debt, and ignored the constitutional limits on their own authority. We desperately need to learn from the Jeffersonians — both from their triumphs and their failures.
One of the great virtues of Gutzman’s “The Jeffersonians” is that he generously quotes his subjects, allowing them to speak for themselves. We would do well to listen to them.
Sawhorse
3 months ago
Sorry, but the Civil War DID NOT START OVER SLAVERY. Lincoln used Gettysburg to appeal to the abolitionists to motivate the North. This is a fact. States rights was the issue as the North and West cut the South out of the Transcontinental Railroad and it got worse from there.
Blue State Deplorable Sawhorse
3 months ago
You beat me to the punch. In point of fact, states’ rights was the root cause. Slavery was a tangential if irreconcilable issue that fueled it - each new slave-holding state meant a new state without slavery was needed to offset it - but more fundamentally it was about opposing views of how the states would be governed. The Southern states had voluntarily entered the union, and felt they also had a right to secede. They opposed a strong federal government and contended that rights not explicitly granted to the federal government belonged to the individual states.
I see this notion that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves all the time, but that’s simply not so. It’s revisionism. Lincoln personally despised slavery, but was more than willing to retain it to preserve the union. When the states began to secede, they forced his hand leading to the Civil War.
Pepsi_Freak Blue State Deplorable
3 months ago
" Lincoln personally despised slavery, but was more than willing to retain it to preserve the union."
Correct. In fact, he so stated in public. He felt preservation of the Union was more imperative than abolishing slavery (i.e., abolition could wait, restoring the Union couldn't). //
AFVet262
3 months ago
Sounds like DeSantis used a very balanced approach in teaching. When I was working on my masters in military history, I had a professor who used a very similar approach, and who also made the statement that the Civil War was not about slavery.
And the fact is, to many of the players at the time, it wasn't. Of the 11 states that eventually seceded, only 5 explicitly mentioned slavery in their declarations. The majority focused on the concept of states' rights - which included import and export controls, foreign policy, and several other components.
Lincoln stated that his sole goal was to preserve the Union - and if he could do that by freeing all the slaves, he would; if he could do it without freeing any slaves, he'd do that.
The causes of the Civil War were much more complicated than the issue of slavery. It was clearly a part of it, but not the sole reason. DeSantis, by taking the "devil's advocate" approach, opened his students' eyes to the wider historical picture. Good on him. //
CarolineL
3 months ago
To distill the many, many reasons for the Civil War down to “just slavery” is ridiculous.
It’s like saying WWI happened just because Arch Duke Ferdinand was shot. Yes, it was a flash point but it’s laughable to discount the decades of built up of hostility, previous European history, the treaties among allies and countless other integral people, facts and events. //
davenj1
3 months ago
- Sharyl Attkisson is a hero among investigative reporters in my book. She's been vilified for her story on Queen Hillary and Bosnia, Fast and Furious, and the TSA. She was targeted by the Obama DOJ. She stood strong!
- There is some strong evidence that the Civil War was fought because of competing economic systems- the industrial North versus the agrarian South. There is nothing for DeSantis to apologize here. I was taught the War of 1812 was not about the impressment of US naval sailors, but because the US had it eyes on Canada, or that it was about products protectionism and tariffs. It's what a real teacher does. Kudos to DeSantis for being that type of teacher. He gets my vote.
medieval davenj1
3 months ago
Item 2 is quite correct -- the Civil War was about re-uniting the US which was split over economic issues. Slavery was a side-issue which was brought forward for purely military reasons. The actual causes of the Civil War are quite complex and covered extensively (and quite read-ably) in first volume of Bruce Catton's "Centennial History of the Civil War."
Rather, this takes wokeness in children’s programming not just to another planet, but well into another universe. Jarring cuts with various questionable claims are interspersed with black children raising their fists and shouting “Slaves built this country!” over and over. That is then parlayed into a demand for financial reparations.
And we the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic predjudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.
Slaves built this country.
In another section, it is asserted that Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves and that “Emancipation is not freedom.” Other generalized claims include the idea that slavery made “your families” rich, a statement pointed at all white Americans, and that slavery built the banking and shipping industries.
There are several problems here, beginning with the fact that it’s just incredibly divisive and harmful to teach children eight generations removed from slavery that they are oppressed victims due to the suffering of their ancestors. Anyone who watches that clip and is impressionable is going to walk away thinking they have a right to be angry at and punish those that don’t look like them. //
It is a grossly inaccurate simplification of American history to teach kids that “Slaves built this country.” Slavery contributed to parts of the early economy in the United States, but it did not build the country into what it is today (or even what it was a hundred years ago).
Why? Because slavery is an evil, atrophying institution that stunts the growth of a nation instead of accelerating it. In the case of the United States, it locked generations of slaves and non-slaves alike in abject poverty. Slaves were obviously not paid while their forced labor then crushed the market for the labor of non-slaves. Compounding the situation, because most slaves weren’t allowed to be educated and the vast majority of non-slaves at the time were so poor they couldn’t afford to be, generations of advancement were lost across the board.
Slavery was not good. It had no redeeming qualities. It did not “build this country.” Instead, those who perpetrated it mired the country in place for decades for the benefit of a very select few. It wasn’t until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that the United States actually began its march to global dominance beginning with the industrial revolution.
Lastly, even if one wants to ignore everything I’ve just written, the “Slaves built this country” line also suffers from a math problem. There were a little over three million slaves in the United States in 1850 (the last pre-war census taken). In comparison. there were 23 million Americans in total. Non-slave-owning adults made up the vast majority of that number and almost all of them worked hard labor jobs in relative squalor, with the largest populations of people residing in non-slave states. In other words, they also “built this country,” and it does not downplay slavery to admit that context. //
Brytek
an hour ago
slavery didn’t build this country, but it most certainly nearly destroyed it. Slaves were mostly used on plantations in the south, but slaves also existed in scattered areas of the north. The building and construction of this country was mostly done by paid laborers not slaves. The CRT notion of reparations is an appeal to the weak minds of carefully groomed people who have been raised up for such nonsense. Every single group of humans deserves reparations given past sins against their ancestors by someone - some more egregious than slavery. Take the American Indians, or native peoples anywhere where they were “colonized”. I think the Jews deserve reparations from the entire world over their treatment for 1000’s of years. What about the people in Spain and Southern France who had to live through the attack and enslavement by the Moors - do they not deserve reparations? Can any amount of payment wash clean anyone’s ancestors ‘sins” - of course not and their offspring are not guilty of their distant ancestors behaviors. This grab for reparations is simple a money grab based on the gene pool lottery, got some of them slave genes in ya - collect a payment. //
ConservativeInMinnesota
2 hours ago
This bit of revisionist history completely ignores millions of indentured servants who were effectively slaves except for having a time when they would gain their freedom.
Slavery was evil and our countries greatest sin. Our country was among the first to end it and helped end piracy worldwide to end slavery worldwide.
It was also practiced by every culture in human history except the Intuit in the arctic. Nobody has clean hands and her propaganda is nothing more than hate speech.
Atlas Air flew home the last 747 ever produced on 1 February, marking the end of 747 deliveries from Boeing after 53 years.
A day after a gala ceremony fit for the Queen of the Skies the 747-8F registered N863GT thundered down Paine Field’s Runway 16R and lifted into the air to the awe of gathered onlookers. After a low pass at Paine, the flight headed east for Cincinnati, but not before drawing a special tribute to the 747.
En route from Everett to Cincinnati, the Atlas Air 747 took the time to draw a crown and “747” over eastern Washington. The 152 kilometer (94.5 mi) wide by 95.8 km (59.5 mi) high piece of sky art took 2 hours 35 minutes to complete at an altitude of 12,775 feet. The flight plan for this portion of the flight included 39 separate way points.
The final 747 delivery
The delivery of N863GT marks the final 747 to fly away from Everett after 1,574 model 747s came off the production line. From the first 747-100 to the shortened 747SP to the most successful variant, the 747-400, to the final 747-8, Boeing’s most iconic work has exited the building at Paine Field. The building will now be repurposed for 787 rework and a fourth final assembly line for the 737 MAX.
The original Mac was written in Pascal and assembly, though not natively. They had to use a cross-platform development system called the Macintosh Development System, compiling on one machine and transmitting the binary to the target (via a serial connection) for execution and testing. Very similar in concept to hardware-testing software on iOS. //
The Lisa/Lisa 2 supported this kind of cross-platform development, but it was too expensive for most developers. The environment sold to developers comprised two Mac 128s. When the 512 came out, it became possible to code natively. Two or three applications were available by late 1984 that allowed users to write and run simple interpretive code: Microsoft Basic, Turbo Pascal, and a Mac version of Apple Pascal that didn't seem to materialize past the demo stage.
The lack of a good, cheap development system probably contributed to the exodus of developers--especially game developers--from the Mac to the PC. It wasn't until the Mac Plus came out in 1986 that it was a truly comfortable environment to code in. Two years wasted. Oh, well.
FAA type certification was awarded June 11, 1963, and Helio gave the Twin Courier a designation of H-500. Foreseeing military use, the U.S. Air Force assigned the designations U-5A and U-5B to the naturally-aspirated and turbocharged versions, respectively. But despite the certification and preparation, only seven examples would ever be produced. //
The operational history of these seven aircraft is as unique as their appearance. While Helio publicly stated that all Twin Couriers were delivered to the CIA, they would go on to operate in clandestine operations under various entities of the U.S. military and government. Over their operational lives, some would be given USAF markings, while others would wear civilian paint schemes and civilian registration numbers. The N-numbers were registered to entities speculated to be shell companies for the CIA. //
Dr. Joe F. Leeker of the University of Texas, Dallas, has compiled what might be the most comprehensive history of the Twin Courier. In it, he traces the progression of each airframe through its respective history, noting that they saw service in Nepal, Bolivia, Peru, and the U.S. before being transferred to—and disappearing in—India. From there, the trail goes cold, and no Twin Couriers are known to exist today.
We can speculate, however. Given the rugged, remote areas in which the aircraft were known to operate, demanding airstrips and conditions likely claimed more than one aircraft. //
Considering the clever engineering and intriguing history of the Twin Courier, it’s unfortunate none exist today to be admired in person by future generations. Despite being certified by the FAA, it’s unlikely more will ever be built.
The famous Pantheon in Rome boasts the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome—an architectural marvel that has endured for millennia, thanks to the incredible durability of ancient Roman concrete. For decades, scientists have been trying to determine precisely what makes the material so durable. A new analysis of samples taken from the concrete walls of the Privernum archaeological site near Rome has yielded insights into those elusive manufacturing secrets. It seems the Romans employed "hot mixing" with quicklime, among other strategies, that gave the material self-healing functionality, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. //
It was believed that the Romans combined water with lime to make a highly chemically reactive paste (slaking), but this wouldn't explain the lime clasts. Masic thought they might have used the even more reactive quicklime (possibly in combination with slaked lime), and his suspicion was born out by the lab's analysis with chemical mapping and multi-scale imaging tools. The clasts were different forms of calcium carbonate, and spectroscopic analysis showed those clasts had formed at extremely high temperatures—aka hot mixing.
“The benefits of hot mixing are twofold,” Masic said. “First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction.”
It also seems to impart self-healing capabilities. Per Masic, when cracks begin to form in the concrete, they are more likely to move through the lime clasts. The clasts can then react with water, producing a solution saturated with calcium. That solution can either recrystallize as calcium carbonate to fill the cracks or react with the pozzolanic components to strengthen the composite material.
Masic et al. found evidence of calcite-filled cracks in other samples of Roman concrete, supporting their hypothesis. They also created concrete samples in the lab with a hot mixing process, using ancient and modern recipes, then deliberately cracked the samples and ran water through them. They found that the cracks in the samples made with hot-mixed quicklime healed completely within two weeks, while the cracks never healed in the samples without quicklime. //
mgsouth Seniorius Lurkius
DJ Farkus said:
So many questions... Did they pour the hot-mix, is it required to be poured hot? How high of temperatures are we talking here? I wonder how they heated batches on-site (or did they transport it for pouring)?
Thank you. Now I have a mental image of a wagon pulled by a brace of oxen, with a huge oak barrel slowly rotating in the back. Meanwhile, the drover is flicking a whip about, cursing the throng of people in the street, screaming he has a *!@#! load setting up and get out of the !#@!! way. (In Latin, of course.)
At its peak in the second century, the Roman Empire dominated nearly two million square miles of the world. As with most such grand achievements, it couldn’t have happened without the development of certain technologies. The long reach of the Eternal City was made possible in large part by the humble technology of the road — or at least it looks like a humble technology here in the twenty-first century. Roads existed before the Roman Empire, of course, but the Romans built them to new standards of length, capacity, and durability. How they did it so gets explained in the short video above. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1aFWtBXHII
On a representative stretch of Roman-road-to be, says the narrator, a “wide area would be deforested.” Then “the topsoil would be removed until a solid base was found.” Atop that base, workers laid down curbs at the width determined by the road plan, then filled the gap between them with a foundation of large stones.
Atop the large stones went a layer of smaller stones mixed with fine aggregates, and finally the gravel, sand, and clay that made up the surface. All of this was accomplished with the old-fashioned power of man and animal, using tipper carts to pour out the materials and other tools to spread and compact them.
The ancient Romans were masters of building and engineering, perhaps most famously represented by the aqueducts. And those still functional marvels rely on a unique construction material: pozzolanic concrete, a spectacularly durable concrete that gave Roman structures their incredible strength.
Even today, one of their structures – the infamous Pantheon, still intact and nearly 2,000 years old – holds the record for the world's largest dome of unreinforced concrete.
The properties of this concrete have generally been attributed to its ingredients: pozzolana, a mix of volcanic ash – named after the Italian city of Pozzuoli, where a significant deposit of it can be found – and lime. When mixed with water, the two materials can react to produce strong concrete.
But that, as it turns out, is not the whole story. An international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that not only are the materials slightly different from what we may have thought, but the techniques used to mix them were also different.
The smoking guns were small, white chunks of lime that can be found in what seems to be otherwise well-mixed concrete.
Nuclear Newswire is back with the final #ThrowbackThursday post honoring the 80th anniversary of Chicago Pile-1 with offerings from past issues of Nuclear News. On November 17, we took a look at the lead-up to the first controlled nuclear chain reaction and on December 1, the events of December 2, 1942, the day a self-sustaining nuclear fission reaction was created and controlled inside a pile of graphite and uranium assembled on a squash court at the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field.
On December 16 the Department of Energy reversed a decision made nearly 70 years ago by leaders of its predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, to revoke the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the first group of scientists and engineers at what would eventually become Los Alamos National Laboratory as they built the first atomic bomb. While it comes far too late for Oppenheimer, his family, and his colleagues to appreciate, the McCarthy-era campaign to discredit Oppenheimer is now itself officially discredited as “a flawed process that violated the Commission’s own regulations,” in the words of the DOE’s recent announcement.
Oppenheimer’s story has been told many times by biographers and chroniclers of the Manhattan Project; a new feature film is expected in July 2023. Today, we offer a #ThrowbackThursday post that examines the scant coverage of Oppenheimer’s life and work in the pages of Nuclear News to date and draws on other historical content—and the DOE’s recent move to correct the record—to fill a few of the gaps.
Raise a toast to an incredible 19th-century Missouri scientist when you pop that bottle of fine French bubbly on New Year’s Eve.
His name is Charles Valentine Riley.
He was an entomologist. He studied bugs. And he saved the Champagne industry.
Riley raced to the aid of shattered European winemakers during an agricultural tragedy that’s gone down in history as the Great French Wine Blight.
Winemaking in France is rooted deep in the soil — and deep in the soul.
The soul of France was torn apart in the 1860s when its vineyards were invaded by a voracious pest called grape phylloxera.
The microscopic aphid feasted on the roots of French grapevines for decades to follow. //
The insect reduced “vast areas of vineyard to what one winegrower described as rows of bare wooden stumps — resembling huge graveyards,” write authors Don and Petie Kladstrup in their 2001 book, “Wine and War.”
Phylloxera caused billions in economic damage, with an immeasurable impact on French culture and national identity. Almost every vineyard in France was invaded by phylloxera by the end of the 19th century. //
He had discovered that grapevines in his state were immune to the ravages of phylloxera. With his leadership, millions of rootstock from the United States — including 10 million from Missouri alone — were shipped to France in the late 1800s.
The native European vines were grafted to the robust, bug-resistant American roots.
The French wine industry slowly rebounded, then battled through two world wars to a full recovery on the strength of American rootstock. //
Americans consume more French wine than any people on the planet but the French. //
Missouri at the time had a robust and internationally renowned wine industry. Its gorgeous wine grapes sprouted from vines that were first planted just a few decades earlier by German immigrants.
Missouri’s celebrated Stone Hill Winery was the third-largest winemaker in the world in the 1870s. It produced about 1.3 million gallons of wine annually at its peak — the equivalent of 6.6 million standard 750-milliliter bottles. //
The desperate French government offered a 300,000-franc award to anyone who could solve the crisis.
The answer lay in Missouri.
Phylloxera was native to the United States — which is why American vines were resistant to their ravages. The pests were unintentionally shipped to Europe in trans-Atlantic trade.
Riley traveled to Europe three times over the next several years to convince scientists and officials of the hope found for the French wine industry in American vines. //
Riley never got the 300,000-franc prize.
But he went on to a distinguished career in international entomology.
He was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor by France, its highest honor in service to the nation.
The war on history has come for Thomas Jefferson.
On Monday, the New York City Council unanimously voted to remove a Jefferson statue from New York City Hall, though it hasn’t yet decided where to put it. The statue has been there for nearly a century and was originally created to celebrate religious liberty.
The effort to remove it met no resistance from Mayor Bill de Blasio. In fact, the whole thing was driven by the historical art commission he launched in 2017.
To get an idea of what this commission was about, the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant was under consideration for being labeled a “hate symbol.” //
Jefferson, whatever his personal foibles, was the author of the greatest anti-slavery document in modern history. The Declaration of Independence, which contains the famous line, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” not only became a rallying cry to abolish slavery in America. It was an inspiration to anti-slavery movements around the globe.
Today, the institution of slavery has disappeared nearly everywhere, despite being with almost every human civilization through all human history.
Thank you, Mr. Jefferson. //
However, as much as has been purged, the entire movement is an indictment on the mob, the New York City Council, and the country’s ruling cultural elite, not Jefferson and the great men and ideas of our history.
It’s an indictment of the small-minded fanatics who’ve built and accomplished nothing other than tearing down the symbols of greater men, whose accomplishments were profound and transformative. //
We have to protect and build on our history. When a statue is torn down, build another one in another city in defiance. The only way the war on history ends is when Americans begin to put their foot down and say “no” to the absurd demands.
We need to go out and explain to our friends and neighbors why the ideas and people who built this country were great and worth defending, and why we should look to build on what they accomplished rather than reducing everything to rubble and hoping something good can emerge from the ashes.
The New York City Council may be tearing down statues. It’s our job to now start building more up and furthering the profound and true ideas that Jefferson stood for.
As a Christian holiday, Christmas is foundational to America’s original character. It’s affected our founders’ understanding of human nature. //
Across cultures, people have sought to flee oppression and escape persecution from the beginning of recorded history. A recurring theme in Western classical literature and in modern classics such as Superman and Disney originals, which revolve around the struggle between good and evil, is the need and critical role for a rescuer or savior.
The ultimate rescuer and savior for mankind would be a “messiah,” who would vanquish evil, oppression and falsehood once and for all. It is no accident that only Christianity has its roots and its entire reason for being in the messiah Jesus Christ. No other religion makes the claim that it was founded by a messiah. //
As a Christian holiday, Christmas is foundational to America’s original character. If Christ had never been born and died the way He did, all of history would have been different. For one thing, neither Columbus nor the Pilgrims would have received or have been motivated by the good news of salvation through Christ to explore or establish a new community with a higher purpose in the New World.
There would never have been a constitutional government created in the way and time that it was in America, without two necessary conditions: First, the foundation of recognizing man’s unalienable rights of freedom and equality that came out of the teachings of Christ, more fully recognized in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
Second, the unprecedented collection of Christian human genius that came together—rather amazingly at the same time—people we call the Founding Fathers, who were deeply influenced by Christianity. The founders knew the potential depravity that exists in everyone can lead to abuse of power and tyranny. For this reason, they structured the government with checks and balances between the three branches of government, but also through the federalist system of division of power between the states and the federal government.
The constitutional republic formed by the Founders provided for and protected individual rights of freedom and independence such that America achieved material prosperity more rapidly than any other prior civilization. Additionally, the American constitutional framework enabled people to move closer to the divine image in which all people are created free and equal more than they would have achieved under any prior system. //
Rediscovering America: How the National Holidays Tell an Amazing Story about Who We Are – by Scott S. Powell
Spitfire SurpriseSpitfire Mark IX MH434 is one of the most famous of today's flying Spitfires and is a combat veteran of WW2 and post war conflicts.
On this day, 19th July 1996, the pilot Ray Hanna decided to scare a TV documentary crew to death by taking off, hugging the ground, and pouncing on the crew while they recorded a link for a documentary on the 60th Anniversary of the Spitfire for American TV. I had a camera with me on the day - I was producing the TV crew - and looking for the aircraft through my lens it suddenly appeared and I clicked the shutter before dropping to the ground. The video of the moment is on Youtube with copious expletives (https://youtu.be/4iOoiEbtf2w) if you want to see what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brd44OS0Ueo
Ray Hanna was one of the best warbird pilots of his generation, formerly in the Royal Airforce he had been leader of the aerobatic display team the Red Arrows and once he became a pilot of classic aircraft he and MH434 were the go to team for numerous Hollywood film directors.
When it came to low flying stunts Ray was the best there was and the secret was decades of experience with the aircraft, faultless expertise and meticulous preparation. As for my photo, that was luck...
Martin Stockham 1996 and 2016
The final Boeing 747 rolled out of the assembly building in Everett, Washington this week, capping a 54 year production run for the iconic Queen of the Skies. The final 747, line number 1574, will be delivered to Atlas Air in early 2023. While the 747 is no longer in production, it is still busy flying passengers and cargo around the world.
According to Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, it wasn’t a lack of trying that took down DEC. It was the inflexibility of the business model they had so long relied upon:
“Digital Equipment Corp. had microprocessor technology, but its business model could not profitably sell a computer for less than $50,000. The technology trapped in a high-cost business model had no impact on the world, and in fact, the world ultimately killed Digital. But IBM Corp., with the very same processors at its disposal, set up a different business model in Florida that could make money at a $2,000 price point and 20% gross margins—and changed the world.”
“That was the roughest 10-15 minutes I ever spent,” said one pilot. A squadron of B-24s had flown in one of the first days of Operation Argument. It had been a success. Only three crews didn’t return. It was the beginning of the Eighth Air Force’s big winter of 1944 push to cripple or crush the Luftwaffe ahead of the D-Day invasion. The crews called it the “Big Week”.
Jim had been promoted to Major. In comparison to most of the bomber crews, Jim was ancient. He was 36. On a cold February 24th in 1944 he watched from the tower as bombers returned. That day, it wasn’t his turn to fly. Half of the flight didn’t come back on February 24th. 12 crews were lost. He would lead the next day’s mission over Fürth. It would be his second mission of the Big Week.
The next day, German skies were filled with Allied aircraft. 754 bombers and over 200 fighters dotted the skies over Bavaria. Flying at 18,500 feet, with the bomb bays already opened, a sudden incalculably loud blast ruptured the air in the cockpit. Jim was in the copilot’s seat. Although he was strapped in, his body rocked upward and back down. An 88mm shell had blown a hole in the aircraft almost directly between Jim and the pilot. Both men looked at the hole and down at the German landscape below. The crew was on oxygen and wore wool flight suits to keep the intense cold at bay. It made little difference. 40 below zero air was sweeping into the interior. With a gaping hole in the middle of the Dixie Flyer, Jim watched in horror as other planes were hit by flak. Another B-24 took a direct hit and disintegrated before his eyes. One parachute. The rest of the crew, if not already dead, fell to their deaths. The Dixie’s parachutes were blown up with the 88 shell that ventilated their cockpit. No exit now. Jim and his pilot knew that they would either make it back or die. No parachuting into German and a POW camp.
At 18,500, ice was forming around their oxygen masks and on their exposed skin. The instruments were icing over and the two pilots had to collectively muscle their crippled bomber back home. They made it back as the Dixie, split almost in two, and came to a stop just seconds away from falling completely apart. Jim was “blue” from the cold and shell-shocked. He would fly again but he was “broken” for a few weeks.
Jim, Jimmy Stewart returned home to a film carrier that he thought was over. His hair had turned gray. Stewart rarely spoke about the war after he returned. He refused to do a movie about his life. His Distinguished Flying Cross was displayed in his father’s hardware store.
Before he was an actor, Walter Matthau was a radioman and gunner aboard a B-24 in the same group as Jimmy Stewart.
Most crew members weren’t famous or about to be famous like Stewart and Matthau. They were mostly “kids” who were 18 to 21 years old. Even pilots commanding a crew were usually in their early 20s. College-aged boys-to-men. Most bomber crews knew the odds of returning home were small. The Memphis Belle reached the magic number of 25 combat missions. Few did. Statistically, it was impossible to reach 25 missions and earn a ticket home.