Word: aloft
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...have not, as head of the Department of Aeronautics, one plane in all Germany which I could have sent aloft yesterday. The incident shows how defenseless Germany is. Communistic planes might come over here any time...
...celebration. In vast St. Peter's Square, late in the afternoon, 50,000 Romans and pilgrims waited. Presently from St. Peter's central doorway appeared the Pope, apparently kneeling but actually sitting at a priedieu on a platform borne by twelve husky men. Pius XI bore aloft a gem-encrusted monstrance containing the Host.* Prelates held a damask canopy over the Holy Father's head and stirred the warm air about him with ostrich-plumed flabella. Mace-bearers, torchbearers. Noble Guards and Swiss Guards walked at his side. The crowd cheered. Then 18 cardinals...
Circling back, the Pope approached an altar on St. Peter's portico, behind which was a great tapestry of the Last Supper. He turned, held aloft the monstrance, pronounced solemn benediction. At once floodlights swept his white-robed figure. With his procession he re-entered St. Peter's, dark, obscure. Then suddenly the 50,000 watchers beheld the entire dome, the roofs, the porches and balustrades of St, Peter's burst into flames of thousands of flaring torches. The crowd cheered, while the basilica blazed like a vast birthday cake. As they went back home, in trams...
...faster ones began to glow from atmospheric friction when 84 mi. from earth's surface. At 54 mi. they burned themselves out. Two of the meteors spattered luminescent trains behind them, which Astronomer Olivier's men saw floating 50 to 60 mi. aloft. Wind drove one train upward at an angle of 55 degrees and a speed of 142 m. p. h. Wind drove the other train 90 m. p. h. up 35 degrees. No plane or rocket could maneuver in such mighty drafts...
Significance. Aeronauts began 100 years ago to try to make steam engines fly, because no other motive power existed. The first successful dirigible, flown by Henri Giffard in 1852, was steam-propelled. Ten years before, W. H. Phillips had sent aloft a small model helicopter with a steam engine in it. Langley's first successful flying model, in 1896, was steam driven. Maxim worked on the idea. But no full size airplane flew. And before one did, Charles M. Manly had built a gasoline engine lighter per horsepower than any steam plant produced so far. When it was proven...