Word: cathay
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...island. To date, the runway had been all bitumen, a surface suited to propeller aircraft but given to melting if hit by jet exhausts. Suddenly, concrete sections appeared at each end. Pilots flying along aviation routes past Hainan could see new, jet-fighter-sized dispersal bays under construction. One Cathay Pacific Airways pilot suggested to a Hong Kong official that, in view of the apparent defense buildup, flight routes should be shifted farther from China's coast. Nothing was done...
...couple of weeks later, Cathay Pacific had reason to regret the inaction. On July 23, one of its passenger aircraft, a DC-4 Skymaster en route from Bangkok to Hong Kong, became the centerpiece of a three-day imbroglio that U.S. Navy historians later labeled the Hainan Incident. The death toll was higher than last week's affair: four of the DC-4's 12 passengers and crew died. And the U.S. reaction was considerably less muted...
That morning the Cathay airliner was at 2,700 m in clear sky, some 30 km off Hainan's east coast. At about 8:40 a.m., two Chinese fighters suddenly appeared. The aircraft were later identified as Lavochkin LA-7s, Soviet-built prop-driven fighters. For no apparent reason, the planes opened machine-gun and cannon fire. The DC-4's captain Philip Blown tried evasive action, hurling the DC-4 into a steep dive. But the airliner kept taking hits. Syd's Pirates: A Story of an Airline (Durnmount, 1983), by retired Cathay senior captain Charles "Chic" Eather, documents...
...Ming dynasty China and the realm of the Ottomans, which blocks western Europe's old land routes to the east. Portugal and Spain seek oceanic alternatives; Lisbon rounds the Cape of Good Hope to reach India; Madrid crosses the Atlantic in hopes of landing in Marco Polo's Cathay but finds the Americas instead. Two continents are suddenly open to conquest...
...immense wealth of the Mongol empire and the suddenly free passage from west to east attracted merchants and adventurers, whose goods and tales would change the world. Marco Polo's stories became the dreams of Christopher Columbus. The quest for a passage to Cathay, the medieval name for northern China, would propel countless explorers through serendipitous discoveries in America. (In 1634, for example, the Frenchman Jean Nicolet left Quebec in search of China and discovered Green Bay, Wis.) Meanwhile, Franciscan missionary diplomats sent by the Pope to seek an alliance with the Khan against Islam brought back a black powder...