Day Tripping: June 14

Aviators, Album Covers, and Answers From Science

Fearless Flyers

John Alcock and Arthur Brown departed St. John’s, Newfoundland in a modified Vickers Vimy aircraft to embark on the first-ever crossing of the Atlantic in 1919. The two British airmen carried personal supplies, several pieces of the first airmail, and extra fuel tanks in place of bomb racks. The airplane was so heavily weighed down it very nearly didn’t clear the tree line on takeoff.

The remainder of the journey was far less than according to plan as the electrical generator failed, robbing the pair of radio contact and cabin heat. When fog set in over the Atlantic, it forced Brown to fly blind without the benefit of his sextant. Later, the fog was replaced by a snowstorm and Arthur had to climb out and chip at the ice that was building up on the wings.

Miraculously, the duo reached Galway County, Ireland less than sixteen hours later and proceeded to land in an open field not far from their intended target. The field, however, turned out to be a bog making the landing less than stellar. Still, the remarkable feat was hailed by Winston Churchill and they were knighted by King George V.

Record Recall

On the insistence of John Lennon, Capitol Records president Alan Livingston went ahead and released The Beatles’ infamous butcher cover for the album Yesterday and Today in 1966. The cover image taken by Australian photographer Robert Whitaker depicts the four mop-tops wearing white butcher’s smocks, and surrounded by dismembered and bloodied doll parts and strings of sausage.

Having already arrived in record stores, disgusted executives at Capitol quickly get the record pulled from shelves, but not before several thousand copies have been sold. The image that pays homage to Luis Bunuel and Salvidor Dali representing the tattered shambles of fame was exchanged for a banal shot of the group standing beside a trunk. The album cover is now a much-sought collector’s item that has fetched as much as US$125,000 on the trade market.

Science Saving Lives

A team of Swedish surgeons saved the life of a ten-year-old girl by transplanting the first vein ever created in a lab from the girl’s own stem cells in 2012. The blockage in her hepatic portal vein was potentially fatal without the procedure where doctors took a piece of the donor organ and stripped away all the living cells, replacing them with marrow taken from the patient. Two weeks after injecting the marrow into the new tube, the surgeons successfully implanted the piece into the patient.

A member of the medical science team that operated, Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson of the University of Gothenburg said, “I’m very optimistic that in the near future we will be able to get both arteries and veins transplanted on a large scale.” The value of grafting stem cells from a patient’s own tissue greatly reduces the occurrence of rejection of the transplant.

Musical Milestones

Queen Elizabeth II bestows knighthood on Beatles producer George Martin in 1996, and then Mick Jagger in 2002.

Narratives

When a clerk at a London railway station notices a tea chest moving among the other mail in 1964, he opens it to find twelve-year-old Carol Dryden who is trying to mail herself to The Beatles.

Remembrance

Henry Mancini left a legacy of film scores that is unmatched today. His music includes the Pink Panther theme, Days of Wine and Roses, and Breakfast At Tiffany’s which featured the famous song, Moon River. Henry Mancini was only 70 when he passed away in 1994.

Notable Births

1931 — Motown saxophone great, Junior Walker

1933 — The talented novelist who wrote Being There and The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosiński

K. Barrett Katie Wallace Maria Rattray Maryam Merchant Dr Mehmet Yildiz Tree Langdon Myriam Ben Salem Phil Truman Chelsea Mandler MAT Terry Mansfield Hollie Petit, PhD. Terry Trueman Dr Preeti Singh John Gruber Bill Abbate James G Brennan ScienceDuuude Marcus Liam Ireland Claire Kelly Noorain Hassan, BMS Amy Pierovich David Acaster Nora Thewriteyard David Perlmutter Joe Luca

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