Now For Something Completely Different

[tiger_one]

Big Tennis Racquet, Barellan, NSW​

 

[tiger_one]

The shirt worn by Pelé in the 1958 World Cup final has sold for £3.6M at a Sotheby's auction in New York.
The seller bought the shirt in 2004 for £70,000.
They have made a 5,000% return on investment.

It is now the second-most expensive football shirt ever sold, behind the Argentina jersey Diego Maradona wore when he scored the infamous 'Hand of God' goal against England at the 1986 World Cup, which fetched £7.1M in 2022.

 

[tiger_one]

After the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan

launched one of the world's most ambitious disaster-prevention efforts.

To better protect its coastal communities, the country built a massive 246-mile (nearly 400-kilometer) tsunami wall

designed to reduce the impact of powerful waves.
In addition, more than 9 million trees

have been planted along vulnerable coastlines to help stabilize the land, reduce erosion, and act as natural barriers against storms and flooding.

While no defense can completely stop nature's force, Japan continues to combine advanced engineering

, environmental restoration

, and cutting-edge early warning systems

to improve resilience and save lives.
These long-term investments reflect the country's commitment to preparing for future disasters and protecting generations to come.

 

[tiger_one]

 

[tiger_one]

The Concorde's cockpit needed a third person just to keep the plane in the air — and his job was unlike anything on a normal jet.
While standard airliners flew (and still fly) with two pilots, Concorde required a dedicated Flight Engineer, seated behind the captain and co-pilot at his own dedicated panel. He wasn't just backup. He was essential.

Here's what made his job so demanding:

Fuel as a balancing act. Concorde carried 95 tons of fuel across 13 separate tanks. As the aircraft accelerated toward Mach 2, its center of pressure shifted backward. To compensate, the Flight Engineer continuously pumped fuel between tanks to keep the plane balanced — essentially trimming a supersonic aircraft in real time. Some passengers reported feeling the fuel moving beneath the cabin floor mid-flight.

Over 200 gauges, no automation to lean on. Every wall, the ceiling, the pedestal, all of it was packed with analog dials and switches. There was no glass cockpit. Pilots read a Mach meter with orange "bugs" marking safe speed ranges tied to the shifting center of gravity, plus separate readouts for the droop nose position and variable engine air intake ramps.

Four engines under constant watch. The Flight Engineer monitored the Olympus turbojets and their afterburners (reheat), used to punch through the sound barrier, along with engine pressure ratios, temperatures, and hydraulics — all of it manually cross-checked, not automated.

Advanced for its time, but still hands-on. Concorde did have fly-by-wire controls and dual autopilots with autoland capability — genuinely ahead of its era. But the sheer complexity of supersonic flight meant no amount of 1960s-70s automation could fully replace constant human oversight.

Air France called it a "temple of technology." Looking at the cockpit today, it's easy to see why.
Concorde retired in 2003. Nothing has replaced it since.

 

[tiger_one]

In 1989, the East German state airline Interflug decided to retire one of its massive four-engine jetliners, an Ilyushin Il-62. The aircraft was slated for donation to a museum in Stölln—the historic village where German flight pioneer Otto Lilienthal conducted his early gliders' experiments.

However, the logistics of getting a 100-ton long-haul passenger jet across the country presented a massive headache: dismantling the plane, trucking it over land, and reassembling it at the site would have been outrageously expensive and complex.

Captain Heinz-Dieter Kallenbach proposed a daring alternative: instead of taking the plane apart, he would simply fly it straight into Stölln and land it on the town's small, 860-meter grassy airstrip. To make the impossible landing work, Kallenbach and his crew meticulously calculated every detail, stripping non-essential equipment to reduce weight and preparing a high-stakes short-field landing maneuver.

Because grass runways offer virtually no braking friction and the distance was less than half of the Il-62's standard required landing length, there was practically zero margin for error.

On October 23, 1989, Kallenbach approached the field, deployed maximum reverse thrust before touching down, and slammed the jet onto the unpaved surface, whipping up a massive cloud of dust as the aircraft skidded to a safe stop just before the end of the grass strip.

The unbelievable spectacle was captured on video and earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Today, the aircraft, affectionately nicknamed "Lady Agnes" after Otto Lilienthal's wife, remains preserved in that same field as a museum and event venue.

 

[69-05-41]

The Concorde's cockpit needed a third person just to keep the plane in the air — and his job was unlike anything on a normal jet.
While standard airliners flew (and still fly) with two pilots, Concorde required a dedicated Flight Engineer, seated behind the captain and co-pilot at his own dedicated panel. He wasn't just backup. He was essential.

Here's what made his job so demanding:

Fuel as a balancing act. Concorde carried 95 tons of fuel across 13 separate tanks. As the aircraft accelerated toward Mach 2, its center of pressure shifted backward. To compensate, the Flight Engineer continuously pumped fuel between tanks to keep the plane balanced — essentially trimming a supersonic aircraft in real time. Some passengers reported feeling the fuel moving beneath the cabin floor mid-flight.

Over 200 gauges, no automation to lean on. Every wall, the ceiling, the pedestal, all of it was packed with analog dials and switches. There was no glass cockpit. Pilots read a Mach meter with orange "bugs" marking safe speed ranges tied to the shifting center of gravity, plus separate readouts for the droop nose position and variable engine air intake ramps.

Four engines under constant watch. The Flight Engineer monitored the Olympus turbojets and their afterburners (reheat), used to punch through the sound barrier, along with engine pressure ratios, temperatures, and hydraulics — all of it manually cross-checked, not automated.

Advanced for its time, but still hands-on. Concorde did have fly-by-wire controls and dual autopilots with autoland capability — genuinely ahead of its era. But the sheer complexity of supersonic flight meant no amount of 1960s-70s automation could fully replace constant human oversight.

Air France called it a "temple of technology." Looking at the cockpit today, it's easy to see why.
Concorde retired in 2003. Nothing has replaced it since.


View attachment 41091

Nope, that is an early 747 and it had significantly more systems than Concorde, it also required a dedicated Flight Engineer.

Here is Concorde, I took this photo of G-BOAG in Seattle.

 

[tiger_one]

Nope, that is an early 747 and it had significantly more systems than Concorde, it also required a dedicated Flight Engineer.

Here is Concorde, I took this photo of G-BOAG in Seattle.

View attachment 41133

Thanks champion @69-05-41 for fixing that - I just went with the so-called fact checked source.

 

[Buttface]

Nope, that is an early 747 and it had significantly more systems than Concorde, it also required a dedicated Flight Engineer.

Here is Concorde, I took this photo of G-BOAG in Seattle.

View attachment 41133

Enthusiast?
Pilot?
Back seat flyer?

 

[tiger_one]

 

[tiger_one]

 

[tiger_one]

 

[tiger_one]

In October 2002, after the Bali bombings, 28 badly injured victims were flown to Perth for burns treatment.

At Royal Perth Hospital, Professor Fiona Wood and her team were suddenly treating some of the most severe burns cases Australia had ever seen.
Wood had already pioneered spray-on skin technology, a technique designed to help burns victims heal faster and reduce scarring.

The Bali bombings made her work known across the country, but the real story was years of research, surgery and persistence before the disaster ever happened.

In one of Australia’s darkest moments, a Perth surgeon helped show the world what modern burns treatment could become.