Flying Adventure
RALLYING CALL
Pandemic, asymptomatic, prodrome, pathogen and coronavirus were words most of us were unfamiliar with until the beginning of this year. So, leaving them behind for now, Martin Ferid takes a fond look back at last year’s RSA Rally at Brienne-le-Château. With one eye on 2021… here have been about 20 serious epidemics and pandemics throughout history, with the first known occurring in Hamin Mangha, a village in north-eastern China around 3000 BC, long before modern religions and their designation of such events as atonement for our sins. When we look at what the ancients would have called prophecies or witchcraft, and what we refer to as science fiction, I for one believe all the far-fetched crazy ideas. From Star Trek and teleporters to life on Mars and contact with aliens, who are hopefully far more intelligent than us and manage survival without the need to destroy each other or their planet. The question is, will humanity be prepared enough and able to cope when the time comes, or will our ‘cherished’ world leaders be so bogged down with their own agendas that they can’t see the wood for the trees? Time travel, now that’s a biggy to get your head around, especially the mechanics of how it would work. The measurement of time itself began around 1500 BC
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Main The Napoleon Museum is housed in the former École de Brienne-le-Château, one of 12 elite training establishments that fed the École Militaire in Paris, and is where Napoleon learned his military craft.
with the ancient Egyptians, initially using sundials, the Merkhet, candle clocks, water clocks, hourglasses and eventually mechanical clocks. It wasn’t until 1868 that Swiss luxury watchmaker, Patek Philippe, made the first wristwatch, for the Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. Yoko Ono gave one to John Lennon for his 40th birthday, but for the majority of us the nearest we are going to get to sporting one is a cheapo fake from Thailand. However, if it wasn’t for you and I, or at least our aviatory forefathers, and open-cockpits, the humble wristwatch may well have remained second choice to the pocket watch. The Santos-Dumont watch was created for practical reasons in 1904 by Louis Cartier, to honour the eponymous Brazilian inventor and pioneering aircraft builder. In 1901 Alberto Santos-Dumont had won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize for flying around the Eiffel Tower in his S-D No 6 airship. Spending most of his adult life living in Paris designing and building hot air balloons and early dirigibles, he was eventually drawn to powered flight. In 1906, it was his 14-bis design, the
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