Over the past 6 months of blogging I’ve mentioned on a number of occasions that old airplanes and dirigibles bring a thrill to my boyish heart thus my curiosity was peaked when I discovered that on this day in 1873 Alberto Santos-Dumont was born. Mr. Santos-Dumont was a weathly Brazilian aviation pioneer who relocated to Paris, France at age 18 to live and study. Santos-Dumont began his flight experimentation with balloons and had his first successful ascent in 1898.

After this he started to construct gasoline powered dirigibles and created and flew fourteen of them.

Achieving success with these flights he began to solve the problem of how to steer these balloons. In 1901 Santos-Dumont entered a contest with a hydrogen-filled airship. The contest was to leave St. Cloud, circumnavigate the Eiffel Tower, and then return to the starting point in less than 30 minutes. On October 19th, 1901 Santos-Dumont won this competition.

Being a true gentlemen, Santos-Dumont distributed the 100,000 francs prize in equal shares to his workers and to the beggars of Paris. After the success of the Wright brothers in 1903 he began working on heavier-than-air machines. In 1906 Santos-Dumont completed the first observed heavier-than-air flight in Europe and in 1909 he constructed his most famous plane, La Demoiselle (shown below), which was the precursor to the modern light plane.

Unfortunately this creative, brilliant man became increasingly depressed over the use of aircraft in wars and committed suicide in 1932. While he was alive he made daring flights in many amazing rigs.

Speaking of amazing rigs, today marks the 67th birthday of Dame Diana Rigg!

Diana Rigg is best known for her role as siren and secret agent Emma Peel in the cult British television series The Avengers. Wildly popular both in Britain and America, Diana Rigg portrayed Mrs. Peel in 51 episodes from 1965-1967.

“For the uninitiated, The Avengers is a stylish blend of espionage, fantasy and quasi-science fiction that appeals to Anglophiles who enjoy witty, sentimental, slightly off-beat television.” Diana Rigg played opposite Patrick Macnee (John Steed).

In each episode a creative message of “Mrs. Peel, we’re needed” ensured that Steed and Peel would be off to solve yet another bizarre case.

I can’t emphazise enough just how much fun this show truly is. It is an extremely fun, wacky, creative spy series and the characters of Emma Peel and John Steed are wonderful. I have a few episodes on DVD and long for the complete collection. In August of 1999 Diana Rigg was voted #1 in TV Guide’s “Top Ten Hottest Stars of All Time” and watching the show it is easy to see why. She was (and frankly, at 67, still is) very attractive and her character was always dressed in flashy, “modern” 60’s outfits. Her admittedly cheesy karate-style butt-kicking is a precursor to Sarah Michele Gellar as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In addition to years of experience on the stage, Diana Rigg starred in a James Bond flick, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was fair Helena in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Twelfth Night (which I have on video and talked about here) and more recently can be seen as the host on the PBS series Mystery!

Lest I be accused of spending too much time mooning over Mrs. Peel let me say a heartfelt Happy Birthday to Dame Diana Rigg so that we can shuttle off to an anniversary.

On this date in 1969 Neil Armstrong leapt out of the Apollo 11 module Eagle and uttered his famous line, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

Buzz Aldrin followed Armstrong 19 minutes later and described the moon as “magnificient desolation” . They brought with them a plaque reading, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” They planted an American flag and spoke to President Richard Nixon by radiotelephone.

I was not quite one year old when this event occurred and yet seeing the footage thrills me as much as it would have had I been old enough to realize what was taking place. The crew of the Apollo 11 truly did take a giant leap and that leap fuels the hopes and starry-eyed imaginations of science fiction geeks like myself to this day.

Happy Anniversary gentlemen. On that day you were not only Americans but you were men of the world, making the kind of history that any kid any where could be excited about.