Knights Without Parachutes — pilot training

Adapted from an article for History on a Shirt by Ewan Tallentire When you think of the great WWI aircraft, the first thing that comes to mind is the fighters. Germany had the Fokkers, the Red Baron's Dr.I and the powerful D.VII. Britain had the Sopwith Camel even before an imaginative beagle climbed into the "cockpit." The French had the sports car of them all, the Spad XIII. The Americans' most well-known aircraft of WWI was not a fighter; we fought the air war flying British Camels and S.E. 5a's, along with French Nieuports and Spads. America's great WWI aircraft served on the home...

French Flying Chicken Coops Our family is building a chicken coop. For chickens. One hundred years ago, when a much higher percentage of Americans lived on farms, chickens were a normal thing to have, rather than a suburban farming fad. Roosters then were not restricted by community covenants, non-laying chickens were probably dinner rather than pets, and coops would have been built out of whatever was lying around, not painted beautifully or constructed to look like hobbit holes. (Besides, nobody had heard of a hobbit, because Lieutenant J. R. R. Tolkien was still busy recovering from trench fever.) The purpose of a...