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...)

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_______________________________ 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