A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore, where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.
"He died and went to Heaven," the dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said, "Did God throw him back down?"
Sir John William AlcockBorn 6 Nov 1892; died 18 Dec 1919 at age 27.British aviator who as pilot, with his fellow British aviator Arthur Brown as navigator, completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight on 15 Jun 1919. Alcock served with the Royal Naval Air Service and was considered one of their best pilots. In the WW I, he flew numerous missions over Turkish enemy lines, winning a DSC for a solo attack on three Turkish planes (1917). Alcock and Brown took off on 14 Jun 1919 in a twin-engine Vickers Vimy, a converted bomber from Lester's Field near St. John's, Newfoundland. They landed the plane in a bog near Clifden, Ireland, the next day, having flown 1,950 miles in 16h 27m averaging 118 mph. They received a prize of £10,000 from the Daily Mail newspaper and were knighted. He died in an air crash six months after his transatlantic flight. |
