Years ago I remember my father recounting to me a training film he and his fellow flight school students were asked (forced) to watch in which Guy Kibbee played an angel who admitted dead student pilots to a special place in heaven/hell, without knowing why. The flight instructor showed up
It seems wholly unbelievable that the delicious, nutritious and frequently super-high end fish known as the Tuna was once so obscure to Americans that the company who first introduced a canned, chopped version of it for sandwich use–Van Kamp was their name–thought it best to explain to consumers that it
Yesterday we took a look at the development of the long-playing record. So what better audio delivery system to next delve into than the much-mocked Eight Track Tape cartridge. I was first introduced to the format in 1976 when my father bought a flashy, new Cadillac Seville. The car came
My father Frank De Felitta (1921-2016) was a pilot who served with the Army Air Corps during the Second World War. To honor him on this special day I thought I’d post a couple of clips specifically about the plane he flew. The C-47 was a troop and equipment carrier
In post-World War Two America, there was a strong belief that private aviation was going to sweep the country, and that small airplanes would soon become as common as cars. Partly this arose from the fact that thousands of men who were trained to fly during the war were returning
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s our ginormous Magnavox console living room stereo was the center of my after school universe. In addition to my ever-growing collection of jazz LPs, a great deal of my time was spent listening to comedy records my parents had bought
I mentioned on Monday that we flew in a Biplane this past weekend and experienced one of life’s must-do activities. (Cheap is wasn’t. But I’m happier paying for that than I am for a theater ticket to a Broadway musical I’m sorry that I wound up buying a ticket for).
This past weekend we attended the Rhinebeck Aerodrome, an amazing outdoor (and indoor) display of vintage aircraft, which not only serves as a museum of flight but which also offers an air show consisting of stunt flying of vintage planes by some very very very brave, well trained pilots. As
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jIeUm2KAqYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlb7WNwcs_I The transition silent stars had to make to sound movies was a treacherous one, the main problem being not that they sounded funny but that their voices didn’t always match their on-screen personas. This could work in two different ways. On the one hand, the voiceless William Powell was
Last month my son and I made a visit to McMinnville Oregon specifically to visit Howard Hughes’ ‘Spruce Goose’ in a museum constructed specifically to house and display that magnificent aviation folly. My interest in vintage aviation continues to grow. I’ve been collecting old New Yorker Magazines for years but