Turns out May 6th is the 76th anniversery of the effective end of the coolest method of aeronautical transport us clever monkeys have come up with yet: the dirigible.
LZ-129 Hindenburg came to a fiery end in New Jersey on May 6th 1937. Moral of the story: don’t design vehicles with inadequate anti-static discharge methods, paint them with rocket fuel, then fill them with volatile gas…
Hat-tip to Making Light[0], not an aeronautical blog, but one of the Internet’s better sources of Interesting Awesomeness. Which is what dirigibles count as, huge fireballs and “Oh, the humanity” notwithstanding. There’s a great graphic over on ML, too. Check it out.
[0] Best comment over there has to be comment #2: “But how would we know that books are alt-history if *we* had zeppelins?” ML’s commentariat is full of Interesting Awesome.
