Mustard

Many people have opened up the walls of old houses only to have an avalanche of rusty old blades fall out. Fifty years ago, nearly every bathroom had a medicine cabinet. At the back of the medicine cabinet was a tiny slot for disposing of use shaving razors. But the slot was actually nothing more than a hole in the wall. So, once you put something through that slot, there was no way to get it out.

With amenities like piano lounges, dining rooms and private staterooms, airships were a luxurious and relaxed way to travel the world. 80 years ago, airships like the Hindenburg were more like flying cruise ships than conventional aircraft. They would fly so smoothly, you could balance a pencil on its end without it falling over and could fly anywhere over land and water. Before the Hindenburg disaster, plans were being drawn up for ever bigger, more luxurious airships.

While the Concorde is often hailed as a triumph of modern engineering, the first supersonic transport to ever fly was actually Soviet-built. The Tupolev TU-144 flew even faster than the Concorde and it carried more passengers. What happened to this aircraft and why have so few heard about it?

Imagine if electrical power suddenly went out for hundreds of millions of people. A blackout not just for hours, but for months, throwing our world into chaos and impacting everything from communications to food and water distribution. While a global blackout sounds like the start of an apocalyptic movie, there’s a possibility it could happen.

When launched, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was the most technologically-advanced widebody commercial airliner ever. This aircraft made leaps forward in efficiency, comfort, and safety. 50 years ago, the L-1011 even had the capability to land itself at certain airports in zero visibility weather, when other planes like the Boeing 747 would have to divert.

During World War Two, hundreds of cargo ships raced across the Atlantic in an effort to keep Britain supplied. But these ships were being sunk by German U-boats, warships and aircraft. In 1940 alone, over a thousand allied ships were lost on their way to Britain.

Air travel before the Jet Age wasn’t always glamorous. The relentless noise and vibration from a piston powered propeller aircraft often made long flights even more exhausting. Most aircraft also couldn’t fly high enough to avoid bad weather, so air sickness was more common.