"Stuf4" wrote in message
...
From Gordon Davie:
Today, 19 September 2011, it is 15,401 days since the 'Eagle' landed on
the
Moon.

The significance of that number is that the touchdown at Tranquility Base
was, itself, 15,401 days after another famous landing: that of the
'Spirit
of St. Louis', on 21 May 1927.

After today, Neil Armstrong's "small step" will be forever closer in
history
to Lucky Lindy than it is to us. And if that doesn't make those of us who
watched it at the time feel old, I don't know what will...

First, Gordon, I need to tell you that I meant to specify you as well
in my apology for my British/English mixup.

No worries, I'm used to it!

Now about your sobering thought, my immediate reaction is, "How can
you possibly know this fact?" I'm picturing that years ago you
installed as your screensaver a Lindy v Eagle countdown timer, and
you've been watching it closely ever since in anticipation of today.
Ha!

Not quite! I realised several months ago that it was 42 years plus change
between Lindy and Apollo 11, which was itself of course 42 years ago, so
decided to check the exact date. Any spreadsheet will let you subtract one
date from another and give the answer as a number of days, so all I had to
do was *add* that number to 20 July 1969 and it came back with today's date.
I set my calendar to remind me to post this today, and here we are!

Another point though - by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon,
transatlantic air travel had become commonplace. 42 years after that, we
can't even get back to the Moon the same way we went the first time. (And I
hope you'll forgive a non-American saying that 'we' went to the Moon - after
all, they did go in peace for all Mankind!)

I agree that it is a significant mark that stirs emotion. But to be
accurate historians, we should caution exactly what it is marking.
Why are we singling out Lindbergh's flight? His was not the first
transatlantic flight. That happened in 1919. His was not even the
first non-stop transatlantic flight. This happened a couple of weeks
later in that same year, 1919. And a distance far greater than what
Lucky Lindy flew had been spanned in a non-stop flight in 1924, years
before Lindbergh, going the other direction - Europe to US.

But Lindy is the one that Americans care about. Ask them who Alcock & Brown
were and most of them haven't a clue. When Ripley stated that Lindbergh
wasn't the first to fly the Atlantic in his 'Believe it or Not' feature, he
got hate mail!

For what it's worth, 25 August 2019 is the date when Tranquility Base is
equidistant between Alcock and Brown and 'today' - 18,298 days. And for the
Wright brothers at Kittyhawk, it will be 21 February 2035 - 23,957 days.
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

"Slipped the surly bonds of Earth...to touch the face of God."