Word: mosquito
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Baron Igor Ivan Sikorsky first became interested in aviation when, aged 13, he observed the family wash flapping in the breeze. His interest in multi-motored flight was due largely to a mosquito. Born a Russian subject, in 1889, son of a wealthy psychology professor at Kiev University, he built his first flying-machine (a helicopter) at the age of 18, was jeered by crowds when it failed to rise. His second helicopter rose 5 ft. before collapsing. Thereafter young Sikorsky built a 15-h.p. biplane (S-1), followed by two others of more horsepower. All three crashed, because Igor...
Success came in 1912 when his seventh plane won the Petrograd Military Competition prize of 30,000 rubles. Shortly afterward a fuel-line, clogged by a dead mosquito, nearly cost Sikorsky his life in a forced landing. In 1913 (aged 24) he built and flew the world's first successful multi-motored airplane. His next model, a 4-engined monster which lifted twelve tons, made him famed as the "beardless father of Russian aviation." honored by Tsar and nation. During the War his huge Sikorsky bombers had a reputation for coming back. Of the 73 completed, only...
Visiting an R. O. T. C. camp at Baltimore's Fort Meade, Assistant Secretary of War Harry Hines Woodring slept in a squad tent on an army cot canopied with mosquito netting. Said he: "I like to sleep out in the open again. When I was Governor of Kansas I'd always sleep in a tent while visiting the National Guard regiments...
...believers in the curse of Pharaoh the Press once more reeled off the roll of alleged victims. First was Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the expedition to Luxor. Shortly after the inner tomb was opened he was bitten by a mosquito, scratched the bite, died of infection. A Canadian university professor visited the tomb, died of sunstroke the next day. Two Roentgenologists, summoned to x-ray the mummy, died before they reached Egypt. Lord Carnarvon's halfbrother, the Hon. Mervyn Herbert, one of the first to enter the inner tomb, died, as did the Hon. Richard Westbury, wrote...
Ranged in cases around the hall will be the Lindbergh equipment: parachutes, electrically heated clothes, sun helmets, mosquito netting, emergency food rations, landing flares, sextant, chronometers, goggles, stove, tent, cooking utensils, sledge, sea anchors, collapsible rubber boat with mast & sail, emergency outboard motor, fur boots, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, wireless sets, ship's log, maps, charts...