Blade Runner, released in 1982, is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made and certainly an iconic 80s flick. Shortly after the film was released "The Blade Runner Sketchbook" - which compiled concept art for the film from Syd Mead, Mentor Huebner, Ridley Scott himself and others - was published as a companion piece, though it's print run wasn't remarkable and it disappeared from bookstore shelves pretty quickly.

Now, however, through the miracle of modern technology the entire book is available to view online; for free! Anyone who's a fan of this classic film will want to see this. The reproduction quality is generally excellent and the presentation first rate. If you love 80s films and Blade Runner in particular you owe it to yourself to take a look.

Here are a couple of samples from the online edition with a link after the pics to the full version.



View the entire online edition here.

"Man in the Mirror" live at the 1988 Grammy Awards. Happy New Year!

On September 19, 1981 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel held a free concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park in New York City. Nobody knew what to expect as far as public response was concerned. Would there be 50 aging hippies wandering into the park seeking some kind of validation? Or would there be 10 or 20,000 people? Nobody knew.

As the sun set on the evening of the show it became apparent that this was going to be a concert of historical proportions. More than 500,000 packed the lawn and adjoining areas in a mass whose end wasn't visible from the stage. It was a remarkable tribute to a duo that hadn't issued new music under the name "Simon and Garfunkel" in more than a decade.

These being the days before concerts with gi-normous video screens the vast majority of the crowd could hear but barely see the performers. But who cared? The price was right, the music was right, the weather was perfect and, as Simon (jokingly?) pointed out "The guys selling loose joints are donating half their proceeds to the city."

The concert begat an HBO special, VHS cassette, DVD and a multi-platinum live album.

Here is one of the highlights of the show, Art Garfunkel's soaring "Bridge Over Troubled Water". (Note: the video uploader has dated the piece "1982". That is when the HBO special aired.)

The 1982 Klaus Von Bulow trial had all the makings of a classic murder tale: depressed heiress, distant husband, mistrusting stepchildren and was set in Newport's mansion district to boot. Klaus Von Bulow stood accused of murdering his wife Sunny by injecting her with a lethal dose of insulin. A long line of witnesses who inhabited the fringes of the Von Bulow life painted a picture of a man driven by a desire to get his hands on the fortune of his ailing wife. After a lengthy trial that was more media circus than judicial proceeding Klaus was convicted.

Immediately Von Bulow retained the services of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to represent him on his appeal. Dershowitz focused on how the prosecution had acquired the crucial piece of evidence used to convict his client in the first trial: the medical bag that contained the syringe the prosecution said Von Bulow had used to inject his wife.

After a lengthy investigation Dershowitz and his team discovered that private investigators hired by Sunny's children from her previous marriage (who were no fans of Klaus) had hired a locksmith to open a closet of Klaus' in order to find out what he may have been hiding in there. Because the closet was opened without a search warrant or Klaus Von Bulow's permission the medical bag that was found inside was thrown out as evidence and the prosecution's case collapsed. Nonetheless the state went ahead with a second trial in 1985 but without any truly compelling evidence Von Bulow was acquitted on all charges. Dershowitz went on to pen the best selling book "Reversal of Fortune" about the tragedy. That book was made into a successful major motion picture starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Today Klaus Von Bulow lives in London where he does occasional theater and art reviews. Sunny Von Bulow died in 2008 after 28 years in a coma.

Klaus Von Bulow with his daughter (left) after his acquittal on attempted murder charges.

On the heels of his success with "The Deer Hunter" director Michael Cimino was officially "hot". For his next feature he would take on the well-worn Western genre with a movie about Wyoming's Johnson County War of the 1890s. Cimino assembled an all-star cast which included Cristopher Walken, Jeff Bridges, Kris Kristofferson, John Hurt, Brad Dourif, Mickey Rourke and others and set off for the wilds of Montana's Glacier National Park to capture what he was sure would be indelible images that would set the spirit soaring and underpin his epic tale of greed, pride and frontier fortitude.

Almost immediately the production fell behind schedule due to Cimino's, uh, let's be kind and say "attention to detail". This included tearing down and rebuilding entire sets for reasons that were never entirely clear to the crew and doing as many as 50 takes for some scenes. Another result of Cimino's obsessive behavior was that the $7.5 million budget ballooned to $44 million dollars, making it easily the most expensive movie ever made up to that time. Though the studio tired of Cimino's antics and considered replacing him at various points they never did and Cimino ultimately wound up delivering a movie that was 5 hours 25 minutes in length. United Artists forced him to edit it down for release but his edited version still wound up a corpulent 3 hours 39 minutes long. What's a studio to do? They released it on November 19, 1980.

After a week of empty theaters and scathing reviews the film was pulled, re-edited then re-released. Still, no one came. While the movie did manage to conjure up some amazing imagery any good vibes created by them were undermined by story telling that had all the energy of an empty room. The film wound up grossing around $3 million dollars - which qualifies it as one of the biggest bombs in movie history - and pulled United Artists down with it.

In the bigger picture Heaven's Gate almost single-handedly killed the Western as a popular form of film entertainment. It would take many years before the likes of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" would breath some new life into the genre. Another result of Cimino's excesses was that studios would no longer be willing to simply sign the checks and get out of the way. In the aftermath of Heaven's Gate the director would almost always have a studio rep standing over his shoulder. The film would also receive an "unacceptable" rating from the American Humane Association (AHA) due to several reports that came from the set alleging animal abuse. Those reports would lead the Screen Actor's Guild to authorize the AHA to monitor the use of animals in all subsequent films. A practice that continues to this day.

As for Cimino himself Heaven's Gate closed behind him. Almost overnight he went from Hollywood hotshot to untouchable. He would ultimately direct four more feature films although all of them were box office flops with is last, 1996's "The Sunchaser" earning $21,508 at the box office.

"Heaven's Gate". A film still in search of an audience.

One of my favorite Christmas songs of all time. Merry Christmas from Paris and myself.

With "Notorious" Duran Duran took a turn down funky street and "Skin Trade" is a perfect example. A lot of fans thought the band had lost their way but to me this is one of their most satisfying albums ever and serves as a nice bridge between the adolescent energy of the first few records and the exquisite maturity of their later "Wedding Album".

Maybe the first tangible sign for most people that cracks were beginning to appear in the armor of the formerly impregnable Soviet Union came on May 28, 1987 when an 18 year old West German named Mathias Rust casually flew from Finland directly through Soviet airspace and landed his little Cessna aircraft near the heart of Moscow's Red Square. His escapade sent shockwaves through Gorbachev's Kremlin and resulted in the sacking of several high level Soviet Defense ministers.

The image of his tiny plane sitting in Red Square with Saint Basel's Cathedral in the background became one of the iconic images of the 80s. He received a four year sentence in a Soviet labor camp for his flight though he was never transferred to said labor camp and was released early by Gorbachev as a 'goodwill' gesture to the West.

Though his flight became iconic Rust himself, like many unlikely heroes, turned out to be something less than that, living a checkered life in the aftermath of his adventure. He's done time for attempted manslaughter and been convicted of theft and fraud. On the up side he's tried to organize a think-tank of sorts to find non-violent solutions to political, ethnic or religious problems (apparently he decided manslaughter doesn't solve anything) although it seems that project never managed to find its legs. He's also tried his hand at being a financial adviser. Today he's apparently living in Germany with his second wife and describes himself as a professional poker player.

(left) Mathias Rust in a Soviet courtroom. (center) His Cessna on the ground in Red Square 1987. (right) In a recent photo.

On July 14, 1989 the great nation of France celebrated its bicentennial with enormous fanfare. The problem was that most impartial observers couldn't quite figure out exactly what they were celebrating.

The French Revolution started well enough with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 followed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August. In 1792 a Republic was formally declared and Louis XVI was guillotined. Okay, so far so good. But shortly afterward things started to go terribly wrong. 1793 saw the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror during which time just about anyone with an opinion that ran contrary to Robespierre's was executed. Some say as many as 40,000 lost their lives. In 1795 Robespierre himself was arrested and executed after which the "Directory" (which was the second consecutive dictatorship after Robespierre's) took control and held power until 1799 when Napoleon (dictatorship #3) declared himself Emperor. After Napoleon was kicked out in 1814 the so-called monarchy was re-established. Then there was the constitutional monarchy, the four years of the Second Republic and then the second Empire under Napolean's nephew which ended in 1870. After that you had the Government of National Defense, the Paris Commune and so forth and so on...

The point is that in the century following the storming of the Bastille "France" was little more than a place where the power hungry toyed with the aspirations of the people that were supposed to have been liberated in 1789. The actual revolution can't really be said to have succeeded until late in the 19th century when France finally became something like a stable democratic nation (though even after that it would hand itself over to yet another dictator - one A. Hitler - with barely a wimper in 1940).

Oddly none of the above mentioned inconvienent truths were talked about much during the bicentennial celebrations. Instead what the world got was a PR job of epic proportions. It was all lots of fun though and made for some great fireworks shows so who's going to complain about a few details? Vive-la-France!

Paris: July 14,1989 - Parisians celebrate the oft-forgotten 19th century Dictatorship of the Coconut Shell.

The Empire Strikes Back represents the absolute pinnacle of the Star Wars saga; before George Lucas decided to turn his franchise over to the marketing department, before his computer graphics fetish took hold, before he decided to move back into the directors chair and make a mockery of that profession and before he forgot how to write.

Directed by Lucas' old film school professor Irvin Kershner TESB is emotionally rounded, thematically rich, funny, compelling and imaginative. It doesn't pander to pre-teens as the disastrous "Return of the Jedi" would, doesn't have the kind of slapped-together-for-a-buck-three-eighty look that plagued parts of the original film and - perhaps as important as the fact that it was helmed by an actual film director - it's cast was first rate and had developed a kind of easy rapport with one another that gave the whole enterprise a sense of relaxed believability.

Picking up three years after the events of the first film TESB opens with the rebels in retreat and hiding out on the ice planet of Hoth. On a patrol mission Luke decides to check out an apparent meteorite strike and is attacked by a snow monster and dragged to its cave to await ingestion. When he fails to return to base his friends become alarmed and we're treated to some real character development. Leia and Han are interrupted during a touching and remarkably satisfying scene in which their true feelings for each other finally come to the fore. Han promptly takes control of events and heads out into the dark to find his friend. It's the kind of well modulated emotional sequence that is completely missing from later installments.

Han does of course find and rescue Luke and the story moves onward and outward from there as all the main characters escape the onslaught of the Empire that has tracked them down to Hoth on one of Darth Vader's hunches. Luke, though, is driven by a vision to go to the the Dagobah system where an apparition of Obi Wan told him he'll be instructed in the ways of the force by Yoda, the ultimate Jedi master. There among the fetid, claustrophobic, dimly lit swamps the story ascends into something approaching true myth as Luke is forced to examine his motivations and their possible consequences. It's also there that we're introduced to Yoda in the form of a puppet brought to life by the voice of Frank Oz and the wizardry of the puppeteers. Even after the story leaves Dagobah the emotional resonance remains and informs the remainder of the movie.

Luke returns to try and rescue his friends who've been double-crossed by Han's old buddy Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) and delivered to Vader lock, stock and barrel in return for Vader's promise to leave Calrissian's Cloud City alone. Vader of course has no intention of letting Cloud City retain something like autonomy and this inspires Lando (ever the opportunist) to switch sides again and aid Luke in his rescue attempt. That attempt, though mostly successful, fails to do much for Han who had been frozen in carbonite and turned over to Boba Fet before Luke arrived.

After Leia and company escape Luke stays behind to confront Vader and in their climactic battle over the gaping yaw of Cloud City's core Vader makes one of the most famous proclamations in movie history.

But it's not the plot details of The Empire Strikes Back that make it so compelling a film. It's the little things. The fact that Lucas and Kirshner don't allow the story to be overwhelmed by special effects. The believeability of the interactions between all the main characters, the willingness to allow the narrative to explore the dark side of the hero myth and Kirshner's patient character development. The quiet scenes carry every bit as much punch as any of the action scenes. For example the reaction of R2D2 and Yoda to Luke's decision to confront what awaits him in the forest on Dagobah. The scene early on where C3P0, R2, Leia and Chewbacca have to deal with the possibility that Han has just sealed his own fate by going out alone to look for Luke at nightfall on Hoth. Vader's stunned silence as Luke falls away from him.

These are all the telltale signs of a master film maker at work and one can only rue the fact that Kirshner was not in the director's chair for the third film. But by then Lucas had made his decision to use Star Wars as nothing more than a marketing platform for toys and video games and storytelling was no longer required.

Still, we have The Empire Strikes Back to enjoy. A great film that in its conceptual completeness, subtlety and emotional depth stands shoulder to shoulder with the best sci-fi movies ever made.

In the early morning hours of September 19, 1985 an 8.0 magnitude earthquake occurred off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Coastal communities suffered relatively little damage and the quake did not produce any significant tsunamis. However, more than 200 miles to the east the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City, one of the largest cities on the planet, underwent horrific shaking that lasted for 5 minutes. During that time more than 400 buildings collapsed and thousands more were damaged. Millions of inhabitants lost water, electricity and phone service and worst of all an estimated 10,000 people lost their lives.

In the aftermath of the quake many were asking the same questions: how could such enormous devastation happen in a city that was so far from the quake's epicenter? And why were some parts of the city destroyed while other parts remained virtually untouched? The answers, it would turn out, lie in the nature of the land Mexico City itself is built upon. When the Spanish invaded Mexico in the 16th century they found a city perched on an island in the middle of an enormous swampy lake that lay between two volcanoes. Over the centuries as the city grew the lake/swamp was drained to provide land for expansion. As a result much of central Mexico City rests uneasily upon a mixture of volcanic clay, silt, sand and (relatively recent) lava deposits, while the outer regions are situated on much more dependable rock. The silty deposits that underpin much of the city center are perfectly tuned to the natural 'pitch' of seismic waves so when these waves arrived from the coast they found a perfect amplifier. Its not unlike an electrical signal from a guitar traveling quietly through a cable only to  burst out of the amplifier at ear splitting decibel levels.

In the aftermath of the quake the silence from the government was deafening. In fact it wasn't until 39 hours after the disaster that President de la Madrid addressed the situation publicly. With the government response virtually nonexistent the city's inhabitants took matters into their own hands and began scouring through the wreckage to find survivors. In all more than 4,000 people were pulled from the rubble alive and a large percentage of them owe their lives to these anonymous citizen heroes.

Ruins of the Hotel Regis, Mexico City Sept 19, 1985

There was a time when jeans were just jeans. You bought them to wear to work on the construction site or to just lay around the house in on the weekend. That all ended in the 80s with the introduction of "designer" jeans. No brand was more successful out of the gate than Calvin Klein and undoubtedly no one was more singularly responsible for the success of CK jeans than the product's public face, Brooke Shields.

In the most infamous of a series of racy (for their time) tv commercials the then 15 year old Ms. Shields stared into the camera and breathlessly declared "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Oh my.

Here is that scandalous ad from 1980 which wound up getting banned in many parts of the country but would go on to nonetheless create the basic template for nearly every other designer jeans ad that followed. (Somebody needs to tell that young lady that good girls don't sit like that!)

For me this song is the best thing about "Top Gun". Written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock it was the first single released from the movie soundtrack and reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 13, 1986. It would turn out to be Berlin's biggest hit.

On October 31, 1984 Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India and arguably the most powerful woman in the world, was on her way to a television interview that was to be conducted by British actor Peter Ustinov. As she crossed the grounds of the PM's residence in New Delhi she was confronted by two of her Sikh bodyguards who opened fire on her at close range. One of the assailants fired 9 rounds from a handgun at her before he was killed by other guards and the second gunman pumped as many as 30 bullets into her body as she lay on the ground before he was overpowered and taken into custody.

In response to the assassination an estimated 2,700 Indian Sikhs were murdered during four days of rioting by supporters of the late PM with some estimates putting the number of dead even higher. Several diplomatic cables that have recently been leaked show that American intelligence agencies at the time believed the anti-Sikh violence was orchestrated by high level officials of the Indian government.

Gandhi's assassination was itself a response to her having ordered the Indian military to clear the so-called "Golden Temple" - Sikhdom's holiest shrine - of Sikh militants several months earlier. That operation resulted in the deaths of a large number of Sikh militants who were holed up inside and also resulted in extensive damage to the temple.

The body of assassinated Indian PM Indira Gandhi lies in state. To the left is her son and future PM Rajiv.

Vic Morrow was a Hollywood veteran of both the big and small screen. He was probably best known for starring in the hit 60s tv series "Combat". In 1982 he signed on to appear in a feature film version of the classic Rod Serling tv series "The Twilight Zone". The film would be comprised of four segments each with its own director. Morrow's segment title "Time Out" was to be directed by a rising newcomer named John Landis.

In the wee hours of July 23, 1982 while filming a scene which required Morrow to carry two children (in real life 7 year old Mcya Dihn Le and 6 year old Renee Shin-Yi Chen) across a shallow riverbed while a helicopter loomed over their heads and explosions were set off all around something went terribly wrong. According to the official report:

"The probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris-laden high temperature special effects explosions too near a low flying helicopter leading to foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination due to heat to the other rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter's tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter."

Morrow and one of the children were decapitated by the helicopter's rotor blades as is crashed to the ground. The other child was crushed beneath it. The accident stunned Hollywood and brought to light the shady practices some producers and directors would use to get their movies made. The two children who died had no buisness being on any set at 2:30 in the morning never mind one where so many pyrotechnics were being utilized. Landis had smuggled them to the location and kept them hidden until it was time for their scene. He also was paying them under the table to avoid drawing any union or State of California attention to them.

Ultimately Landis and a score of others who were party to the accident were aquitted of manslaughter and child endangerment charges in 1987. In fact no one went to jail as a result of the accident in spite of the fact that the official report had made it pretty clear that someone had made some very serious errors in judgement which lead to the crash. The families of Morrow and the two children ultimately settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.

Vic Morrow (center) carries Mcya Dihn Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen seconds before fatal accident.

The entire Korean War lasted a little over 3 years. The most well-known tv show to use it as a subject, M*A*S*H, lasted 11. Nobody seemed to care though and it's likely that if the creators of the show had decided to bring it back for a 12th season it would have remained a ratings monster. But they didn't. Instead what we got was the mother of all finales. A 2 1/2 hour tv movie entitely "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", (the title itself seeming to exhibit a certain degree uncertainty if viewed through the Shakespearean prism: "(thou) doth protest too much, methinks").

The show was directed by Alan Alda and, like much of the series itself, was heavy on the melodrama and light on the comedy. A 30 second advertisement broadcast during the show cost $450,000 (nearly a million in 2011 dollars) and the show wound up being the most watched television broadcast in American history drawing a reported 121 million viewers (even surpassing the "Who Shot JR?" episode of "Dallas").

He hobbled to the plate like grandpa Walton his team down 4-3 with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth. The 3-2 pitch from Dennis Eckersley was low and away. His swing looked more like a get-acquainted wiff than anything serious yet the ball fell head over heels for Kirk Gibson and sailed toward the outfield. It sailed and sailed and sailed before landing several rows up in the bleachers as the crowd went berserk, delivering the Los Angeles Dodgers victory in game 1 of the 1988 World Series over the heavily favored Oakland A's.

The fact that Gibson was available to bat at all was remarkable. He'd injured both legs during the NLCS and was battling a stomach virus. After hitting his historic shot he limped around the base paths pumping his fist, while in the announcers booth Jack Buck screamed the now immortal line "I don't believe what I just saw!" It would be Gibson's only plate appearance of the entire World Series but talk about making the most of your opportunities!

The shot seemed to invigorate the Dodgers and conversely spook the powerhouse A's (who'd won 104 games during the regular season) with LA going on to win the series 4-1.

This song, written by Daryl Hall in 1980, was given a workover by producer Laurie Latham and became a monster hit for Paul Young in 1985. A beautiful ballad marked by Pino Palladino's distinctive fretless bass it was his only song to reach #1 in the US and was the springboard to the multi-platinum success of the album that spawned it; "The Secret of Association".

If it weren't for cable tv's insatiable need for content it never would have seen the light of day. But content is king and because of that on May 2, 1982 The Weather Channel made its debut in homes all over the country much to the underwhelmation (I made a new word!) of the general populace. Like nose hairs growing in the dark though this idea of showing blue screen weather maps 24/7/365 with people standing in front of them saying such hair raising things as "a small low pressure center over Des Moines shouldn't bring any significant precipitation to eastern Iowa over the weekend" gradually took root. Before you knew it TWC was on in the background in nearly every house or apartment you'd visit. People whose connection to the real world was already tenuous due to tv addiction began to meld with their furniture and mark out the passage of their lives to the beat of "local on the 8s".

Every once in a while an actual weather event would occur and TWC would go into full-fledged "release the horses and get everyone into the shelter" mode. It was never clear to me what was more pathetic; TWC's tendency to turn tropical breezes into the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know it or the public's (and I include myself here) willingness to tune into saturation coverage of end-of-the-world storms that never seemed to arrive.

But be that as it may it doesn't seem like TWC is going anywhere anytime soon. Though NBC bought it in 2008 and promptly canned all the original weather jockeys and started showing movies on Friday nights (they've subsequently stopped after enduring a perfect storm of protest from the multitude of blue screen weather map junkies) The Weather Channel enters its 4th decade firmly ensconced atop the meteorological tv pyramid.

Here's the first ever minute of programming from The Weather Channel back in 1982. Listen to the breathless enthusiasm in those voices!

Is there any way to write about sports in the 80s without paying some special attention to "The Hick from French Lick"? Of course not. And so with his birthday coming up in a few days this seems as good a time as any to talk about the man that helped make the NBA relevant again and injected new life into a storied franchise that was reeling at the end of the 70s.

Drafted in 1978 as a "junior eligible" out of Indiana State the Celtics had to wait a year for Larry Bird to finish school before they could take advantage of his services. When asked why the Celtics would spend a choice draft pick on a player who couldn't play for a year the Celtics legendary boss Red Auerbach responded: "You have no idea how short a time a year is". Red knew quality. He also knew quality was worth waiting for.

In the fall of '79 Bird joined a Celtics team that had gone 29-53 the previous year. His impact was immediate and profound. Surrounded by role players and with an aging and beat up Dave Cowens in the pivot, Bird's Celtics (and make no mistake this was his team the minute he pulled on the jersey) improved by 32 wins his rookie season and while they were bounced in the playoffs by the 76ers and their peerless leader Dr J the message to the rest of the league was clear: the Celtics were back.

Detailing all of Bird's statistical accomplishments doesn't do the man justice. Suffice to say that he was perennially among the league leaders in scoring, rebounding, 3-point conversions and free throw percentage. During the 80s his Celtics went to 5 NBA finals (including 4 straight) and won 3 titles while he himself won 3 league MVP awards.

While the stats alone would have made him a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame the fact is Larry Bird was more than numbers and awards. A notoriously tight-fisted blue collar guy he was a perfect fit for the Celtics from Boston, which in 1980 was still a blue collar town. The city embraced him with all the folksy hero worship the working class could muster because Larry Bird showed up for work each and every day and did his job without complaining or bragging. "I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end." Bird is quoted as saying and that's exactly what he gave night in, night out. He was the loose ball scrounging, unglamorous anti-pole to the 'showtime' Lakers and Magic Johnson's million-dollar smile. Bird came to play basketball not to pose for the camera. It was his determination to win not some narcissistic desire to see himself on Sports Center that drove his inspired play. The behind the back pass meant nothing if the recipient missed the gimme. What good was drawing a foul if you missed the free throw? He had every tool in the basketball arsenal at his disposal and like a chess grandmaster unveiled them as needed to produce the desired result.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and like his fellow Boston sports icon, Bobby Orr, Bird's career ended prematurely due to injury. First problems with his heels, finally debilitating back problems that would force him from the game he loved after the 1992 season. In the wake of his departure the Celtics would lose their way and it would take more than 15 years for the franchise to regain the limelight. Even that glow, however, would seem just a bit pale when compared to the supernova that shined in Boston during the 1980s.

The Rutan Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop without refueling. The idea for the plane was sketched out on a napkin one day over lunch by the Rutan brothers and built over the course of 5 years using private funds. The finished aircraft was marvel of space age technology that, when empty, weighed a scant 2250 lbs. If it was going to successfully circumnavigate the globe without refueling it would have to have an incredible lift to drag ratio and it did. The 29 foot long, 2-seater which was built of carbon fiber, kevlar and fiberglass and which sported incredible 110 foot wingspan achieved a L/D ratio of 27 (by comparison a 747 has a L/D ration of 17). Another important element in keeping fuel consumption down on the flight would be the weight of the crew. Having both Rutans in the cockpit would have made the plane too heavy so the Brothers enlisted the help of their colleague Jeana Yeager to handle co-piloting duties. She had been a test pilot for the Rutan brother's experimental aircraft and had established her piloting credentials by setting several speed records in those craft during the early 80s.

And so it was that on December 14, 1986 with Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager on board Voyager began its historic trip at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Filled to capacity with fuel for the flight the plane's weight ballooned to an elephantine 9700 lbs and it would need to use nearly 3 miles of runway in order to achieve takeoff. During that takeoff run the fuel-laden wingtips actually scraped along the tarmac and were permanently damaged, though it was determined that the damage didn't pose any obvious risk to the flight.

After 9 days of flight at an average speed of 116 mph Voyager and her exhausted crew touched down where they started at Edwards with the world's press in attendance to record the event. Their long journey from napkin to history book complete.

Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan emerge from Voyager after completing their historic flight.