Word: balloons
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Every Thanksgiving Day in Manhattan, R. H. Macy & Co. stages a parade of huge comic balloons designed by Tony Sarg. When the procession ends the balloons are released. Cash prizes are paid for their return. But after famed Clarence Chamberlin snared a yellow-&-black dragon on the wingtip of his plane last year and collected $25, Macy's announced that aviators in flight were disqualified as balloon-hunters...
...Roosevelt Hotel one day last week to greet two young men and to listen appreciatively to what the young men had to say. The juniors were Lieut.-Commander Thomas G. V. Settle, U. S. N., winner of the James Gordon Bennett Trophy in this year's International Balloon Races in Switzerland (TIME, Oct. 10); and Ward Tunte Van Orman who finished second. They had just returned from Europe via Graf Zeppelin and South America...
...Bennett winners these patriarchs formed an admiring circle, prompting them with technical questions about the race, clucking over the answers with nostalgic appreciation, marvelling open-mouthed at Van Orman's description of his instruments that sound a buzzer and flash a red light when the altitude of his balloon begins to fluctuate. Lieut.-Commander Settle, a mathematically-minded engineer who inspects the construction of Navy dirigibles, described their homeward voyage on the Graf in precise, unimaginative terms. But Van Orman's gaunt face brightened, his eyes shone as he exclaimed: "Never have I had such a thrill...
...Paris, a group of French stamp collectors posted an offer of one million francs ($40,000). for an envelope that held a message to U. S. citizens signed by George Washington and was the sole cargo of an experimental balloon flight on Jan. 9, 1793 from a Philadelphia prison courtyard to Woodbury, N. J. where Balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard delivered it to Woodbury's Mayor. The letter, of which the whereabouts are unknown, is called the "first letter ever sent by air mail...
...only control the pilot has over his balloon is up & down. He valves gas to descend, drops ballast to rise. His skill is measured by his judgment of weather conditions and his ability to find favoring winds with the least use of his two tools, gas and ballast. A U. S. team won the 1913 Bennett race from Paris when, instead of grounding before they reached the Atlantic as did all other balloons, they continued out to sea, knowing they would strike a wind that would carry them northeast to England. This year all gas bags carried radios to receive...