The Hooverville Hexagon: Other Countries Heard From

 History is all around us, above us, and under our feet.

 

Your Daily Warning That

Halloween Is Coming

by Paulh

Is your grape arbour haunted? Inquiring minds want to know. (FWR might have a script idea.)

 

Cult Movie of the Week

Our recommendation: Silent Running (1972), starring Bruce Dern as what one viewer called a 'psychotic botanist'. We're all for the psychotic botanists. This gem of a film cost $1m to make – that's not a typo – and was partly filmed on a decommissioned aircraft carrier that stood in for a space ark. Silent Running has been overlooked and its message ignored, but it is a work of art that should be on everyone's 'must-see' list. DG

 

All History Is Local:

Mary Ellis

by Bluebottle

In my hometown of Sandown there is a mural of a spitfire dedicated to Mary Ellis. Mary Ellis was an ATA Girl, a woman in the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War. The ATA was a civilian organisation tasked with flying aircraft from factories to airfields for delivery to airfields for service with RAF squadrons, returning damaged aircraft in need of repair to appropriate facilities, as well as transporting mail, medical supplies &c. As the ATA consisted of pilots unsuitable for RAF or Fleet Air Arm service, usually due to age or injury, it was nicknamed 'Ancient & Tattered Airmen', with women pilots enlisted. These female pilots quickly became minor celebrities, nicknamed ATA Girls or Atta Girls. Unusually for the time, ATA Girl pilots received the same pay as their male compartments.

 

Mary Ellis was a highly experienced ATA Girl who during the war flew over 1,000 aircraft of 76 different types. She became the first British woman to fly a jet, being one of only two allowed to fly a Gloster Meteor, making her among the first women in the world to fly a jet.

 

In 1950 she became Europe's first female air commandant, owning and managing Sandown Airport for 20 years. In 2018 she was granted the Freedom of the Isle of Wight when it was realised she was Britain's last surviving female Second World War spitfire pilot and died later that year at the age of 101.

 

Hamburg: St Michaelis Church

by Tavaron da Quirm

St Michaelis (der Michel) is one of the historic landmarks of Hamburg. It was built in the 18th Century but destroyed in WWII and then rebuilt.

 

Keep looking, keep asking,

 Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor