were the last such hydrogen rigid aircraft ever built, and in terms of their length and volume, they were the largest aircraft ever to fly.
They were named in honor of Paul von Hindenburg, who was the second President of Germany.
04 Mar 1936: the Hindenburg’s first flight
06 May 1937: the Hindenburg’s last flight, crash at NAS Lakehurst, in Lakehurst NJ
The second ship, LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II was never operated on a regular passenger service, and was scrapped in 1940 at the order of Hermann Göring.
Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934, so he missed seeing the hindenburg fly, and, crash so tragically and spectacularly. NAS Lakehurst is now JB MDL, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. The spot where the Hindenburg’s gondola crashed to the ground is marked at JB MDL with a black painted ground marker that is rimmed by a bright yellow painted chain. Photo (not mine, I haven’t yet been there): https://southjerseytrails.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/hindeburg11.jpg
According to James Thurber, American Airlines gave its one millionth passenger a free ticket to Europe on the Hindenburg. (He wrote this prior to the crash.)
Pan Am had a waiting list, begun right after the Apollo 11 landing, of over 93,000 people for its planned flights to the Moon, when the airline went under in 1991. Dates and fares were never set. The Orion clipper in 2001: A Space Odyssey, that docked with the wheel-shaped space station, bore the Pan Am logo.
Pan Am was founded in 1927 to carry mail between Key West and Havana. When Pan Am signed its US government contract to carry the mail, the company did not yet have a plane capable of the Havana flight, and had to charter a plane from a Dominican Republic airline, in order to meet the deadline for the first flight.
José Martí International Airport, is an international airport located 15 km (9 mi) southwest of Havana, Cuba, and is a hub for Cubana de Aviación, Aerogaviota and Aero Caribbean, and former Latin American hub for Aeroflot Soviet Airlines. It is Cuba’s main international and domestic gateway, and serves several million passengers each year.
Due to the comprehensive Cuban trade embargo imposed by the United States, flights between the United States and Cuba are operated as Special Authority Charters. These scheduled charter flights are operated under US Government restrictions by authorized charter companies to and from designated US airports.
Although Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro was rumored to be a skilled baseball player and had interest from several major league teams before becoming a revolutionary, there is no evidence that he ever attempted to play professionally. We are not even sure he was good enough to make his college’s varsity team.
The CIA covert plan named “Operation Mongoose”, under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, while more generally aimed at ending Communist control of Cuba, also explored creative ways to assassinate Fidel Castro. The best known idea was to slip him an exploding cigar. Others, per Wiki, included poisoning his cigars (a box of the lethal smokes was actually prepared and delivered to Havana); exploding seashells to be planted at a scuba diving site; a gift diving wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores, or with lethal chemical agents; infecting Castro’s scuba regulator apparatus with tuberculous bacilli; dousing his handkerchiefs, his tea, and his coffee with other lethal bacteria; having a former lover slip him poison pills; and exposing him to various other poisoned items such as a fountain pen and even ice cream. The CIA even tried to embarrass Castro by attempting to sneak thallium salts, a potent depilatory, into Castro’s shoes, causing “his beard, eyebrows, and pubic hair to fall out”
Thomas R. Marshall, vice president under Woodrow Wilson is best known for his comment “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.” The meaning of the comment is often obscured: Marshall made it sarcastically after hearing a Senator making a boring speech talking about what the country needed.
Humorist Franklin Pierce Adams, bemoaning inflation, commented “There are plenty of good five cent cigars in this country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five cent nickel”.
Franklin Pierce Adams was a charter member of The Algonquin Round Table, a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of “The Vicious Circle”, as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country. Other members included Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Ruth Hale, George S. Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Brock Pemberton, Harold Ross, Robert E. Sherwood, John Peter Toohey, and Alexander Woollcott.
CSA President Jefferson Davis’s first slave was named James Pemberton, obtained as a gift in 1823. Another slave named Jim Pemberton, possibly the original James’s son, accompanied the new CSA President to Richmond in 1861. He escaped during the Civil War with his wife Betsy, who was one of CSA First Lady Varina Davis’s body servants.
Varina Davis was a granddaughter of a New Jersey governor, and she was ambivalent about the war. She was well educated in Philadelphia, and with family in both the North and South, she had unconventional views for her public role as the CSA First Lady. She supported slavery and states’ rights.
Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis was the composer of the song “You Are My Sunshine”. In his honor, a bridge across the Mississippi River was named “The Sunshine Bridge”.
Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through Earth’s atmosphere, and is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. When the direct solar radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and radiant heat. When it is blocked by the clouds or reflects off other objects, it is experienced as diffused light. The World Meteorological Organization uses the term “sunshine duration” to mean the cumulative time during which an area receives direct irradiance from the Sun of at least 120 watts per square meter.
The Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge, with a cable-stayed main span, crosses the entrance to Tampa Bay, connecting St. Petersburg with Manatee County. It opened in 1987, replacing an older bridge constructed in 1954 which was partly destroyed in a collision in 1980 (where were you when the ship hit the span?).
St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the newest great cities of Europe, founded in 1703 in order to provide Tsar Peter with a seaport. The city’s name was changed three times in the past century. It’s the world’s northernmost city of over a million.
Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Amsterdam during most of its existence, lost his right leg to a cannon ball and wore a wooden one trimmed with silver during his reign.
Unlike gold, there is a constant need for newly-mined silver to satisfy industrial demand. Silver is used in chemical compounds, from which it is impossible or costly to recover. But nearly all the gold ever brought to the surface still exists in metallic form.
