Amazing True Aviation Story

I've got about 6000 books in my library, and for the life of me I can't locate the one which features this true story. I also can't find it online. Nonetheless, I swear that this is essentially what I read.


In World War I, pilots of heavier-than-air aircraft were not equipped with parachutes because it was thought that the pilot should try to save their failing aircraft, not abandon them.


As often as not, planes were used as spotters for artillery, directing artillery fire to increase its effectiveness against a mobile enemy. While a pilot concentrated on flying, a spotter scanned the landscape for targets from their open cockpits.

A World War I biplane with a second seat for an
artillery spotter


In the case of one Allied open-cockpit observation plane, the pilot was prone to wild antics in the air. He gunned his engine, and for a short time he flew his aircraft upside down.


As he did so, he was unaware that his artillery spotter's seatbelt snapped and that he fell out of the plane and was headed earthward pursuant to the heavy demands of the Law of Gravity.


The pilot completed his maneuver with a power dive toward the ground, and then he leveled off a few hundred feet above the enemy ground.


Several thousand feet above him, the hapless observer, who was probably thinking that it's not the fall that hurts, but the landing, saw to his intense astonishment that the plane he had just fallen out of was suddenly below himself -- and that his course downwards, and its course sideways, were about to intersect.


As the pilot flew his biplane back toward Allied lines, FOOM!, his plane was shook by a sudden terrible jolt, and, to his intense astonishment, when the pilot looked back he saw his artillery spotter on the fuselage of the plane in front of the tail, holding on for dear life. The spotter carefully clawed his way forward along the fuselage into his open cockpit, and made it home safely.

Arrest that Car!

Because we trust science too much, Americans stopped believing in things like curses -- something evil hanging over a person or object, usually at the request of someone filled with hate.

The true story of a particular car, and of the curse which hung over it, warns us that curses are very real.

On June 28, 1914, a car known as a 1914 Graf and Stift Double Phaeton carried Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Countess Sophia through the streets of Sarajevo, in Bosnia.

Suddenly, a revolutionary ran up to the car and fired his gun several times at the Archduke and his wife, killing them both.

The assassination started World War I. 20,000,000 people died.

The next owner was General Oskar Potiorek, commander of Austrian forces in Bosnia. Shortly after receiving the car, his army was defeated, Potiorek was removed from his job, and he became insane and died in a poorhouse.

The next owner was an Austrian Army captain. Exactly nine days after getting the car, he drove it into two farmers, killing them, and then he smashed the car into a tree, killing himself.

The next owner was the Governor of Yugoslavia. Within four months he crashed the car four times. In the last crash, he lost his right arm. The Governor believed that the car was cursed. He ordered that it be destroyed.

The next owner, Doctor Srkis, bought the car before it could be destroyed. In six months, the car rolled over, crushing him.

The next owner was a jeweler who committed suicide in a year.

The next owner was another doctor whose patients all stopped going to him, because they were afraid of the car. The doctor sold the car.

The next owner was a race car driver. During a race, the car smashed into a stone wall. The driver was thrown over the wall, and he died on hitting the ground.

The next owner was a farmer in Bosnia. One morning, the car simply stopped. Another farmer tied the car to the back of his horses and wagon, and began to tow it to a repair shop. Suddenly, the car started by itself, smashed into the wagon and horses, and chased the owner down the road, running over him and killing him.

The next owner was a mechanic who fixed the car and painted it. As he drove six friends to a wedding, there was a crash. The mechanic and four passengers were killed.

The next owner was a museum in Vienna. During World War II, a bomb from a plane bombing the German army fell onto the museum, crashed through the roof, and exploded next to the car.

The museum has not yet learned its lesson. The car and the museum room were repaired, and it sits there today.