Hooray!

The summer 2008 edition of the MOOM - the Museum of Online Museums - has been posted.

Pretty much everything on the list, from the Virtual Typewriter Museum to the Museum of Corporate Neckties (yes, there are airline ties in there) is pretty special.

But since this is a blog about (mostly…) airports and air travel, let me point out two online museums of special interest: The Stewardess Uniform Collection (746 different uniforms from 330 airlines) and the Online Paper Airplane Museum (800 free designs, plus some books and contests)

(Doll wearing Air France uniform. From the Air France e-shopping site)

Have fun!

What a thrill it would have been to be at Niagara Falls on this day back in 1911. That’s when 150,000 people watched aviation daredevil Lincoln J Beachey fly his Curtiss pusher biplane over Horseshoe Falls, underneath the steel International Bridge, and down the Niagara River gorge.

It was the first time someone had “pierced the mists of the great cataract and flirted with the deadly currents in the Gorge,” The New York Times wrote. “Thrilling,” declared Beachey, the stuntman Orville Wright called “the greatest aviator of them all,” and who was the first to perform the “loop the loop,” the first to fly upside down, and the first to fly inside a building.

All while dressed in a business suit.

Courtesy: U.S. Air Force Museum Archives