90px|Lester Brain
Lester Brain (1903–1980) was a pioneer Australian aviator and airline
executive. Born in New South Wales, he trained with the Royal
Australian Air Force (RAAF) before joining Qantas as a pilot in 1924.
He was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1929, after locating the lost
aircraft Kookaburra in northern Australia. As a member of the RAAF
reserve, Brain coordinated his airline's support for the Australian
military during World War II. He earned a King's Commendation for his
rescue efforts during an air raid on Broome, Western Australia in 1942,
and was promoted to wing commander in 1944. Brain left Qantas to join
the fledgling government-owned domestic carrier Trans Australia
Airlines (TAA) in June 1946. Appointed its first General Manager, he
swiftly built up the organisation to the stage where it could commence
scheduled operations later in the year. By the time he resigned in
March 1955, TAA was firmly established as one half of the Commonwealth
government's two-airline system. After his departure from TAA, Brain
became Managing Director of de Havilland Aircraft in Sydney, before
joining the board of East-West Airlines as a consultant in January
1961. Appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in January 1979,
Lester Brain died in June the following year, at the age of
seventy-seven. (more...)
Recently featured: Statue of Liberty – Rudolph Cartier – Northern
Bald Ibis
Archive – By email – More featured articles...
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Brain>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1929:
About 16 million shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange on
"Black Tuesday", a record that stood for almost 40 years, making a
total of $30 billion that had been lost over two days.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929>
1986:
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opened the last segment of the
M25 motorway, an orbital road encircling London that is one of the
world's longest.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M25_motorway>
1991:
Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a
flyby of 951 Gaspra .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/951_Gaspra>
1998:
Four teenagers who were denied entry to a discothèque in Gothenburg,
Sweden, set it on fire, killing 63 patrons and injuring over 200
others.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_discoth%C3%A8que_fire>
1999:
About 15,000 people died when a supercyclone hit the Indian state of
Orissa near the city of Bhubaneswar.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Orissa_cyclone>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
nom de Web (n):
A pseudonym used when publishing on the World Wide Web
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nom_de_Web>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S.
Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton
understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard
was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages.
Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I
certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his
men out of their foxholes.
--Bill Mauldin
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Mauldin>