It's 100 years since the Wright Brothers helped change the world....


December 17 at Kitty Hawk marks an important human milestone...

And a Happy Birthday to Loui Tucker for the 17th!

I asked some friends who know Loui what she has in common with Harry Houdini, and I kinda gave away the answer above. Loui shares a birthday with the anniversary of that first powered flight 100 years ago, and Houdini was the first person to fly a powered aircraft in Australia, at Diggers rest, Sunbury, Victoria near where the current Melbourne International (Tullamarine) Airport now exists.

Australia of course has a long and important aviation history, with characters whose achievements are right up there with the likes of Lindbergh, Post, Bleriot and others.

The national airline, QANTAS (never insult an Australian by spelling it Quantas) is the world's second oldest (KLM is the oldest) and arguably has the world's best safety record. Indeed, in a scene a PR firm couldn't pay enough to have on the big screen, the fact is mentioned in the Tom Cruise -Dustin Hoffman film, Rainman (1988).

It was also good to see everyone's favourite search engine, Google, get in the spirit, as if often does to mark certain occasions, by changing its graphic to reflect the Wright Brothers' flight. The OO in the Google jpeg is duplicated as the props of the Wright flyer...I thought I had a taken a screen shot of it - but, alas I didn't - it was cute!

Posted: Wed - December 17, 2003 at 12:19 AM         |

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