25th August

Today in 1919 the first scheduled flight took place between London and Paris. A souffleuse (female whistler) was employed to entertain the (presumably terrified) passengers. It was very noticeable that everyone wanted to fly from Paris to London and not vice versa.

In other news ..
'Is Paris burning?' Hitler asked today in 1940 as the Wehrmacht took the French capital. This was an 'in' joke really. Napoleon, a century and a half earlier, said 'If I made one mistake in my life it was not to bomb Berlin.'

21st March

The Lord Chief Justice, Herbert Parker, gave the world a fascinating insight into the psyche of judges today in 1961. He said, 'A judge is not supposed to know anything about the facts of life until they have been presented in evidence and explained to him at least three times.'
This was also the time when another judge asked the jury in his summing up in the obscenity case concerning D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover whether this was a book you would allow your servants to read. Both judges were practising when the death penalty still operated in Britain.

Scary, isn't it?

In other news ...
On this day in 1908, the aviator Henri Farman flew over Paris with the first ever air passenger on board his aircraft. There is no truth in the rumour that the man was bound and gagged or that he was suicidal.

He was just high as a kite.