In my previous post, I dropped a hint about an unexpected e-mail that contained some exciting news about the destination of the newest Zeppelin.
Well, here are the details!
(Drumroll, please!)
If all goes well, Zeppelin NT07 #4′s home will be . . .
Super-sleuthing special-effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, hosts of the popular TV show MythBusters, recently took on a challenge of Zeppelin-like proportions — to identify what caused the Hindenburg disaster!
On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg was coming in for a landing after its first transatlantic trip of the year when it suddenly burst into flame. 35 passengers and crewmen, and one sailor on the ground, were killed in the crash. The source of the fire has remained a hotly-debated mystery for 70 years. The most popular theory claims that the ship’s flammable hydrogen lifting gas started the fire. But a more recent theory claims that the fire actually started on the ship’s fabric skin.
So did Adam and Jamie bust the myth that the hydrogen caused the fire?
When I was a kid growing up in Bristol, Connecticut, I used to love going down into our basement when my brothers Mike and Norm were building plastic models. The smell of Testor’s glue, enamel paint, and turpentine was the aroma of my childhood. Mike and Norm taught me how to make my own models, and I still have a big box of full of all the kits I built through high school and even some in college.
All these years later, I have my own house now, but you can be sure it has a workbench in the basement and a big pile of kits and boxes of spare parts waiting to be built. Every time I open up the bottles of paint and thinner, it’s like I’m back in Bristol, looking over my big brothers’ shoulders again.
Well, as readers know, my other great interest is airships. So you can imagine how excited I was when I stumbled upon a wonderful new web resource called AirshipModeler!
It’s a little like “American Idol,” except that it’s in Britain and it’s for iconic structures, not people — but aside from that, the BBC’s Unsung Landmark contest is all about finding the next small-town superstar. And an important piece of airship history could be the winner — with your help!
When I was growing up, one of my dreams was to be able to fly in a Zeppelin, like Erich. Well, apparently I wasn’t the only one…