Saturday, January 20, 2007

Imagine the marbles

THIS guy had to jump...



The first parachute jump was made long before aeroplanes were invented. How?

By a brave Frenchman, Andre Garnerin, who leapt from a balloom in 1797 and lived.
Garnerin's dream to escape from prison, which could have been the first BASE jump, was never realized, but he never gave up the idea about developing a parachute after he was released.

Andrei went on to make 200 more jumps, including the first in UK, a demo jump in 1802. All jumps were the same, ride to altitude in the basket, chop from the balloon, hang on as the basket and canopy oscillates like mad, and recover from the motion sickness after landing.

Garnerin's wife, Jeanne-Genevieve, became the first woman to parachute on 1799. Andrei's niece also got into parachuting and went on to make a total of 40 jumps. Although like Andrei, none of these were freefall, all jumps were canopy rides. Sorry but even if it was a freefall, there wasn't enough parachuting women to complete a WSCR! It was to be another 110 years later or so for the first freefall, even for a split second, by Tiny Broadwick.

The first jump from an aircraft was made more than 200 years later by Captain Albert Berry at St. Louis, USA, on March 1st 1912.



The bonus answer happens to be Flip Wilson!

And Stan wins because nobody else guessed. He was right, also. Spam for the the Gran Pastan!



3 opinionated prattle:

Heidi said...

i do not like SPAM...spam spam spam spam spam...oh no I'll be singing it all night!!

Stan Harrington said...

To all readers, I am deeply, very deeply sorry and I do apologize for winning the latest trivial question. I realize that I had not responded and won the contest, most likly we would not have been exposed to SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM! Again, I apologize, but to be completley truthful, I do enjoy an occasional spam and white bread sandwich - it is Monty Python that I can not tolerate!

john r mclay said...

Monty was a genius. I'll have the spam, spam, bacon, eggs, spam, toast, spam, and spam.

Post a Comment

If you feel the incessant urge,
and your tongue is sharp and quick,
leave a worthless thought for me
whether cool, or fun, or sick.

Web Site Hit Counter