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Happy Hindenburg Day (?)

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.

By Brian Burger

Started this site way, way back in November 1998, when the web was young. It's still here, and so am I.

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