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Warner Robins, Georgia (CNN)Once upon a time there was a "magic airplane" that protected the world from harm by flying faster than a speeding bullet and soaring higher than the highest mountain.
But this is no fairy tale.
"Once upon a time," was really from 1964 to 1999.
And the aircraft was a U.S. Air Force spy plane called the SR-71.
Forty years ago last Thursday in 1976, the Lockheed jet nicknamed the Blackbird broke the world absolute speed record -- flying 2,193 mph -- literally faster than a bullet. That"s three times the speed of sound.
"This is a magic airplane," said the pilot who broke the record, retired Maj. Gen. Eldon "Al" Joersz. "You have this very powerful, exotic machine at your control that you"re trying to dance with -- to make music with. Because that"s what she wants from you. She wants to fly smooth and nice."
Incredibly, the record still stands. No manned airplane with an air-breathing engine has ever flown faster.
Officially. (Wink)
As many Blackbird aficionados know, the SR-71 was the first stealth aircraft, with a special shape and exterior coating designed to evade radar detection.
It was unmatched in its ability to use speed and extreme altitude -- 16 miles high -- to capture photographs and other kinds of intelligence that helped keep the Cold War from heating up.
"Keeping history alive"
On Saturday, the Blackbird family, as you might call them, held a kind of reunion at the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, Georgia, about 20 miles south of Macon.
Fourteen former crew members, including pilots, reconnaissance systems officers, technicians and others traveled from across the nation to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the record breaking flight.
"It was enjoyable to get back in the airplane and refresh your memory where some of the stuff was," said Joersz. But he noticed that everything wasn"t exactly the same.
Forty years ago "the airplanes were so nice [with] leather seats and you"re in a pressure suit ... and everything was so well put together... but here... it"s a beautiful old airplane but it"s got some gauges missing and there"s no soft, cushiony seat, so you kind of say "It"s too bad that we"re not keeping this just the way it was back then,"" Joersz said.
"We were not the only ones who could fly this fast or who could go this high," Morgan said. "We happened to be at the right place at the right time."
The Blackbird family
"It"s beautiful. It"s mysterious. It"s awesome. It"s powerful. It"s timeless," said former Air Force Lt. Carolyn Rosenberg, describing the Blackbird.
That"s high praise for a jet designed in the 1950s.
She used to watch them fly at March Air Force Base, before she met Maury Rosenberg, her future spouse. "The men that worked on the ground and who flew the plane were the cream of the crop," she said.
Turns out Maury was one of those guys. He flew those beautiful, mysterious, awesome SR-71s.
After piloting Blackbirds from 1973-1978and from 1981-1984, Maury decided to move to slower airplanes and fly for United Airlines. "This experience has left an imprint on our lives -- all of us," he said. "Every aspect of our lives -- even whatever we went on to after the Air Force."
Just about everyone said they came to rely on the other teams to do their jobs with precision and perfect timing.
For example, when each Blackbird would return from a surveillance flight, former electronic warfare systems technician Michael Hull remembers how ground crews sprung into action.
"As soon as they pulled in the hangar and shut off the engines, it was just like a beehive: Maintenance guys drop the doors down, pull the mission tapes out, dropping the cameras out, wheeling them right into shops, pull the film out ... and the data would go right into the intel vans and be processed immediately. It was just an amazing operation."
The secrecy of working in the Blackbird program required personal sacrifice, like long separations from family without being able to tell them where they were or what they were doing.
Dave Burns, the ex-crew chief, remembered when he was stationed at the SR-71 base in Japan and he broke the rules to use the jet"s high frequency radio to contact a ham operator in Nebraska. The ham operator kindly patched Burns into a land line so he could call his mom, just to tell her he loved her and he was OK.
What"s next
Although it"s amazing the record has lasted this long, there"s no doubt "someone is going to go faster and take the record," Joersz said. "In the meantime we"re happy to be the representatives that represent the speed that this airplane was able to achieve."
"The technology is there to go faster," he said. Lockheed Martin and other aerospace companies are developing a number of supersonic and hypersonic programs.
Could hypersonic engines be useful in powering a manned surveillance aircraft?
Maybe, said Carpenter.
Unlike satellites, an aircraft"s movements aren"t predictable, obviously. A hypersonic aircraft, meaning an object flying at least five times the speed of sound, flies across hostile airspace and gather intelligence so quickly and unpredictably that it would be out of range before adversaries on the ground could pose a threat.
"A hypersonic vehicle could be a deep penetrator and could provide that unknown time when it would penetrate," Carpenter said.
And how cool would it be if some of the people who eventually develop that new technology were inspired to pursue engineering by an amazing 1960s-era jet called the Blackbird?
Pokémon Go is spreading like wildfire, but so too is “Poké-fatigue”, the associated tiredness you get in your arms from holding your phone in front of you all day. But thanks to the guys at the Rocketnews office in Japan, we’re happy to share with you a quick and low-cost solution to this clearly very serious problem.
Instead of wasting valuable Pokémon-catching time by, you know, going to the gym and working your feeble arms out, why not follow these simple instructions to make your own Poké-Han (short for Pokémon Hanger) mobile gaming accessory! It rests your phone at a comfortable level that encourages you to keep your back straight and your head up. It also increases your field of vision to make your gaming experience safer. All you need to make one is a clothes hanger, some rubber bands, and a complete disregard for your public appearance. Watch the instruction video below for more details. (h/t: rocketnews24)
Watch the video for more info:
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When Allan Little began to feel ill, he knew almost immediately what it was - Lyme Disease. But getting a medical diagnosis, and treatment, took a lot longer.
I"d been going for years to the same little town in New England and Lyme Disease is everywhere there. You can"t walk more than a few hundred metres in the countryside without coming across a public health notice warning you not to get bitten by a deer tick.
So the intense headache, the aching limbs, the burning joints, the ferocious fever and night sweats that hit me in a matter of hours, a few days after I"d got back to London, were all consistent with what I"d read about the condition.
I went to a London GP, who wasn"t convinced. She took a blood sample and advised me to go home, rest, and take paracetamol.
The next day, the blood test came back. It was negative for Lyme.
My condition grew worse. I could hardly stand up. I called another doctor, who came to my house. He was also sceptical. He took another blood test. This too came back negative. But he gave me a prescription for powerful painkillers which made me feel well enough to get on a train to Edinburgh, my home town.
Within three hours of arriving at Waverley Station I was an in-patient in the Infectious Diseases Department of the city"s Western General Hospital: diagnosis, Acute Lyme Disease. By now I had found the tick bite and the distinctive livid red rash, about six inches in diameter. (To be fair to those London GPs, I hadn"t noticed it when I"d consulted them.)
Image copyrightScience Photo LibraryImage caption A stock photo of a rash caused by Lyme disease, with concentric rings
"It"s attacked your liver," the Edinburgh Consultant said. "You have three distinct kinds of liver inflammation". I made a lame sick-bed joke: "You"re sure that"s not like Lager-and-Lime Disease then?" She laughed politely and reassured me that that would look quite different.
Why then had both blood tests come back negative? Dr Roger Evans of Raigmore Hospital in Inverness is one of the UK"s leading Lyme Disease researchers. "In early Lyme Disease," he told me, "the test is not reliable because no antibodies have been produced. In the first few weeks of infection, you could test negative, but still have Lyme Disease."
This is a problem for GPs, especially in urban centres where Lyme Disease is unfamiliar. Lyme is not a viral infection. It"s bacterial. GPs will not prescribe antibiotics if they think you"re showing symptoms of a viral infection - and it does look and feel like a bad case of flu, or chronic fatigue syndrome, neither of which can, or should, be treated with antibiotics.
"In the early weeks of infection, when the blood test is not reliable," says Evans, "the GP needs to assess the patient clinically, looking for other symptoms that identify Lyme Disease." In other words, symptoms that distinguish it from flu.
Image copyrightiStock
If you have been bitten:
Remove the tick as soon as possible - the safest way is to use a pair of fine-tipped tweezers, or a tick removal tool
Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible, pull upwards slowly and firmly, as mouthparts left in the skin can cause a local infection
Once removed, apply antiseptic to the bite area, or wash with soap and water and keep an eye on it for several weeks for any changes
Contact your GP if you begin to feel unwell and remember to tell them you were bitten by a tick or have recently spent time outdoors
Catching it early is vital. Angela Howard fell ill with Lyme Disease in the 1990s. She had never heard of it. Her doctor, she says, told her to go home and see whether her symptoms persisted. It was only when a visiting American friend saw the distinctive rash - concentric red rings around the place where the tick bite had occurred that she realised she might have Lyme Disease. She says her doctor was still reluctant to diagnose Lyme.
"Doctors say you can only get this abroad - that it comes from overseas. But I hadn"t been abroad. I"d been picnicking in Wiltshire."
She was not treated early and her symptoms have persisted for years.
Image copyrightAlamyImage caption A warning sign in countryside near Nantucket, an island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts
There is an accumulation of anecdotal evidence that Lyme Disease often goes undiagnosed. One problem is that no-one knows how prevalent it now is. It is not a notifiable disease in the National Health Service - doctors are not required to inform a central database when they diagnose it. So there is no reliable evidence of how widespread it is, or where in the country you are most likely to get it.
Roger Evans at Raigmore Hospital wants to remedy that.
"We"re using Scotland as a pilot study," he said. "We"re trying to create maps of areas where there"s a risk of tick exposure. We"re using satellite data from the European Space Agency to create an app that will give information, but which will also be interactive, so that users can put in information about where they"ve been bitten and whether the Lyme Disease rash has appeared."
Why has Lyme, which 30 years ago seemed largely limited to a small area of New England - Lyme is the town in Connecticut where it was first identified - now so prevalent across the continental USA and in Europe? One theory is climate change: that small gradations in climate can create new habitats for micro-organisms, or keep them alive and active for longer.
Image copyrightAlamyImage caption A mother and children going walking near Lyme, Connecticut
I was struck, at the time of my own treatment, that awareness was far greater in Scotland than in England and Wales. And awareness of the condition is vital to catching it early. For when you catch it early, treatment is easy and in most cases successful.
It floors you though. It took me four for five months to get my strength and stamina back.
It is a debilitating and dangerous illness and there is no doubt that it is getting more common. You can get it in the Scottish Highlands, in Devon and Cornwall, in Richmond Park in London and probably in your own back garden - anywhere where there are small furry animals on whose skins a deer tick can live.
If you get it, you can get treatment. But take it from me: it really helps if you know in what it is you"ve got.
Find out more
Listen to Allan Little talking about his experience with Lyme Disease on Broadcasting House at 09:00 on Sunday 31 July, on Radio 4, or catch up later on the BBC iPlayer.
At the Television Critics Association"s press tour in Beverly Hills, California on Saturday, HBO"s new programming president Casey Bloys dropped a bomb.
He confirmed that, yes, he intends to go along with the desires of
Bloys, speaking about the desires of runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, said to the media:
"Yes, they have a very specific plan about the number of seasons they want to do. Believe me, as the new [programming executive] coming in, if I could get them to do more. I would take 10 more seasons. But we take their lead on what they think they can do the best version of the show."
Wow!!
This is huge, only because it is the very FIRST time anybody in an official HBO capacity has confirmed this.
Bloys says that second part isn"t totally confirmed yet — and they are even maybe considering some type of spin-off from it:
"We"ve talked about it. It"s something I"m not opposed to, but of course it has to make sense creatively. I"m not sure that [Benioff and Weiss] could really wrap their heads around it when they"re just about to start production [on season 7]. It"s a pretty intense production, they"re about to start production soon. I"m open to it. The guys weren"t opposed to it, but there"s no concrete plans for it at this point."
We can only hope some type of good spin-off is in the works, because right now, we just aren"t ready for GOT to end!
Image copyrightCanal & River TrustImage caption James Brindley"s early career focused on building and repairing mills, where he learned to control water flows
A new exhibition marking 300 years since the birth of canal pioneer James Brindley has opened. How did his work transform the English landscape and unlock a new era in the Industrial Revolution?
When James Brindley sought Parliament"s backing for his plan for an aqueduct over the River Irwell in Lancashire, he apparently employed a novel means of gaining their attention.
Taking out a block of Cheshire cheese, the man who engineered England"s first canal carved out a model of the waterway he hoped to build.
"It"s not clear if he cut it into pieces and put it in water to illustrate how waterproof troughs worked or if he carved arches to show how an aqueduct could work," said Nigel Crowe, from the Canal & River Trust.
Image copyrightHERBERT DUNKLEYImage caption Various accounts suggest Brindley carved cheese to showcase his Barton Aqueduct design to a parliamentary committee
"The other story is he brought in a lump of clay and bashed that into shape.
"If it is true or not, it is a nice bit of fiction."
Born in Tunstead in the Derbyshire hills in 1716, Brindley moved as a child to a farm in Leek, Staffordshire, left to the family by their Quaker relatives.
His early career focused on building and repairing mills in the area, where he learned to control water flows.
Image copyrightThe Waterways ArchiveImage caption Josiah Wedgwood saw the benefits of the Trent & Mersey Canal to the ceramic industry
The quality of his work catapulted him into the national limelight.
A meeting with the Duke of Bridgewater led to the start of the Bridgewater Canal, commissioned in 1759, to transport coal from the duke"s mine at Worsley to Manchester.
At the time a pioneering feat, the waterway became recognised as the first real canal in Britain.
The building of the Bridgewater Canal"s Barton Aqueduct - the structure he had demonstrated with cheese - became his most famous feat, opening on 17 July 1761.
It was the first navigable aqueduct to be built in England and a structure that would stand for another 100 years.
Image caption James Brindley invented locks which allowed boats to descend and ascend waterways
Over the following decade, Parliament backed the creation of a number of new man-made waterways cutting through England"s industrial heartlands.
The Trent & Mersey Canal, Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, Droitwich Canal, Coventry Canal, Birmingham Mainline Canal and Oxford Canal all began to be developed during this period, the Canal & River Trust said.
Brindley had a hand in all of these but was heavily involved, as engineer, in the Trent & Mersey and Staffordshire & Worcestershire developments.
Spotting an opportunity to transport goods more cheaply and efficiently from his factories in the Stoke potteries, industrialist Josiah Wedgwood became an early advocate of canals and fought hard with Brindley for their construction.
Their work flew in the face of one "gentleman of eminence" - rumoured to be the engineer John Smeaton - who publicly denounced "he had heard of castles in the air but had never before seen where any of them was to be built", according to Victoria Owens, who transcribed Brindley"s notebooks.
As well as revealing he spelled words phonetically, the notebooks chronicle his "conscientious" nature and that he was "careful with money", Ms Owens said.
Four of these notebooks spanning 1755 to 1763 have now been uncovered and form part of a new exhibition about his life at the National Maritime Museum Ellesmere Port, in Cheshire.
The Brindley 300 exhibition runs until 2 October and is among a number of events taking place to celebrate the canal pioneer"s life and legacy.
Mr Crowe said there was "no doubt" the Duke of Bridgewater acquired knowledge and books from travels in France which led to the conception of the first British canal, but it was Brindley"s contribution that created their "idiosyncrasy".
It was the genius of his construction techniques that have sealed his place in history.
He made British canals narrow, to save water.
The "Brindley lock" allows boats to descend and ascend waterways.
And he used puddle clay to waterproof the base of the canals.
Image copyrightThE WATERWAYS ARCHIVEImage caption Lord Rusholme on the inspection launch Lady Hatherton on the Trent & Mersey Canal in 1954
But Brindley would not live to see much of his legacy; he died at home in September 1772, probably from pneumonia he contracted after a severe rainstorm while surveying a new branch of the Trent & Mersey.
"You cannot overstate the importance of James Brindley"s contribution to the industrial revolution," Mr Crowe said.
Regardless of the idiosyncrasies of his designs or his methods, Dr Malcolm Dick, director of the Centre for West Midlands History and an academic from the University of Birmingham, said Brindley"s work was "huge" and "pioneering".
"Brindley was an important figure - not the first creator of canals, but someone whose skills were applied to enable commercial and industrial elites to develop new transport routes.
"Clearly someone who we need to associate with the development of Birmingham and the West Midlands."
Historian and Stoke-on-Trent Labour MP Tristram Hunt said: "He was a great ally of Wedgwood. They were good friends and Wedgwood was always worried about how hard Brindley was working because he was a workaholic.
"Brindley"s work was enormously important ensuring the Trent & Mersey Canal went through the Potteries and north Staffordshire which was vital in the development of the ceramic industry.
"It made it easier to export to Liverpool and easier to import clay and flint."
Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce"s chief executive Paul Faulkner said: "James Brindley"s vision for an effective and efficient transport system allowed industries such as manufacturing to grow significantly.
"Birmingham and the Black Country became great economic drivers when the canal network started transporting manufactured goods, raw materials and coal.
"The region remains a hotbed for manufacturing and other industries and we have James Brindley to thank."
