They Flew

An award-winning historian’s examination of impossible events at the dawn of modernity and of their enduring significance Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era—tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft—even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals. Eire observes how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early modern life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton’s scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supernatural that marked the transition to modernity. Using as his case studies stories about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Joseph of Cupertino, the Venerable María de Ágreda, and three disgraced nuns, Eire challenges readers to imagine a world animated by a different understanding of reality and of the supernatural’s relationship with the natural world. The questions he explores—such as why and how “impossibility” is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science—have resonance and lessons for our time.

Om udvikling og operationer med det engelske fly hawker hurricane under den 2. verdenskrig. Forfatteren beretter om flyet, piloterne og mange af de opgaver og missioner de gennemførte, bl.a. om luftoperationer over Burma og missioner til beskyttelse af skibskonvojer i Atlanten, de artiske områder samt i Middelhavet.

This book is a compilation of a life well spent as a world traveler and police commander with the Richmond Virginia Police Department. It is presented as is life, in the form of short stories of police operations and life lessons in other areas. There is much humor inside, because this is the way I saw my life. There is, as well, serious and well-thought-out tales that occurred over a lifetime of living.

They Flew Proud crisply tells the story of the Civilian Pilot Training Program through the Army Air Force Cadets at Grove City College (PA.) and the Grove City Airport where the flight instructors (including Gardner Birch) trained the cadets to solo. Across the U.S., more than 435,000 men and women were taught to fly under the CPTP in pre and post WWII. In Grove City, the 8th Detachment?s 486 students received almost 5,000 hours of instruction, and then went forward to serve their nation in WWII.In Part 2 Gardner Birch, manager/instructor refocused the airport to teach civilians to fly after the CPTP was abruptly cancelled. He created five boards to record the 127 students and their solo dates (?44-?48). Narratives from these men and women retell of learning basic flying skills through many wonderful and humorous aviation stories. Those lessons learned in aviation?s early days prepared them for a smoother flight through life and created friendships and passions for flying and airplanes. Numerous photos and visuals add depth, feeling, and understanding to the expressive text and draw us into the special time when some of the greatest generation learned to fly proud.

Quasar, the man considered the leading expert in the world on the Bermuda Triangle, pulls Flight 19 from the Triangle's clutches to reveal it as a military blunder, a tragedy, and an irony. Like an absorbing detective read, "They Flew into Oblivion" leads the reader through the case and its aftermath and then follows the author on his solution of its mystery.

Tracing the history and achievements of enlisted pilots from 1912, when a Corporal volunteered for pilot training, through 1942, They Also Flew records the personal sagas of men determined to serve their country in the air.

Tells the story of the Wright Brothers’ invention of the airplane, climaxing in the triumphant first flight of the Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.