Word: clippers
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...almost the whole Peking Philharmonic showed up at the airport to say goodbye with gifts and mementos. Several private farewells ended in tears. Ozawa led his troops onto the 747. The final glimpse of the Americans must have made the Peking players smile. Pan Am printed the name CHINA CLIPPER on the sides in Chinese characters but, language misunderstandings being what they are, the sign read CHINA SCISSORS...
Ever since the first Yankee clipper set sail for Canton in 1784, China has held a compelling fascination for Americans. Traders and other early visitors to the Celestial Kingdom returned home with tales of teeming millions, exotic landscapes, seemingly outlandish manners and morals. Even today some Americans have a vision of China that is a fanciful montage of antithetical images: Confucius and Kung Fu; Wellesley-educated Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Mao's "sinister" widow Chiang Ch'ing; highborn ladies tiptoeing painfully on bound feet and unisex masses marching in bulky Mao jackets; delicately misty watercolors and propaganda...
...shrouded runway of Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife, the largest of Spain's Canary Islands. The disaster was the worst in aviation history, with a death toll of 583, including all aboard KLM's Rhine River and all but 61 people on Pan Am's Clipper Victor. Last week the Spanish government released the findings of an 18-month investigation of the crash. The verdict: KLM Captain Jacob Veldhuizen Van Zanten's decision to start his takeoff run without tower clearance was the "fundamental cause" of the accident...
...inexplicably, Veldhuizen opened the throttles. Flustered, the copilot radioed the tower: "We are now at takeoff." Since clearance had not been given, the tower assumed that KLM was simply at takeoff position and replied, "Standby ... I will call you." That order coincided with a Pan Am message that the Clipper was still taxiing on the runway, but the information was garbled by an unexplained whistling sound...
...rolling KLM jet, the flight engineer twice asked, "Is he [Pan Am] not clear then?" Emphatically, Veldhuizen replied, "Yes." His KLM plane hurtled down the runway. Suddenly the Pan Am 747 loomed ahead. It was too late: the KLM jumbo smashed into the Clipper...