6th November

I always felt a bit sorry for the Hawker Hurricane. It flew for the first time today in 1935, had 4 machine guns in each wing and a top speed of 325 mph at 20,000 feet. It was eclipsed by the Spitfire almost entirely because of the name. A Hurricane is a natural disaster; spitting fire is all about being unpleasant and deadly all in one.

In other news ...
Adolphe Sax was born today in 1814 in Belgium (oh, what a shame!) and of course invented the Saxophone. It was not until the birth of John Philip Sousa, exactly forty years later, that anybody wrote music which involved the playing of one.

5th March

The most brilliant fighter plane of all time, the Spitfire, soared over the skies of Britain today in 1936. built by Vickers with a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, the plane was to prove more than a match for the Messerschmidt 109 which Willi of the same name had already brought out in Germany. I remember seeing an advert (which was never shown for fear of upsetting our dearest partners in the EU - how soon they forget) showing a Spitfire doing a victory roll over the White Cliffs of Dover and the voiceover saying 'Because he was there, we don't have to say "Vorsprung durch technik".'

Thank you, RJ Mitchell and all the men (and women) who flew them.

In other news ...
Eighty two years ago, Clarence Birdseye came out with his frozen peas. They were round and green and tasted just like the real thing, only colder. Clarence was a New York food scientist and joined the ranks of other cryo-culinarists such as Alvin Findus and Mervyn McCain to bring us such delights as the 20 second sausage and the 5 second baked potato. To steal a thought from Homer Simpson, reading the back of a ready meal - 5 seconds! How can anybody wait that long?