Brian Robson (born c. 1946) is notable for having mailed himself in a crate from Melbourne, Australia to Los Angeles, California in the late 1960s. [1] [2]
In 1965, Robson was in Australia and didn't have sufficient funds to travel back home to Cardiff, Wales. Inspired by the story of Reg Spiers, an Olympic javelin thrower who had performed a similar feat, Robson had his friends seal him in a crate that measured 36 × 30 × 38 inches and send him by post back to London. Supplies in the crate included: a hammer, a suitcase, a pillow, a litre of water, a flashlight, a book of Beatles songs, and an empty bottle. [3] [4]
Robson spent 92 hours in the crate before officials intercepted him in Los Angeles, USA. He was then deported to London. [3]
Robson's plan had been to be shipped directly to London on a 36-hour Qantas flight from Sydney, but the connecting flight was full, and so the crate was left upside down for 22 hours on the tarmac until it was shipped freight by Pan Am to Los Angeles before being transferred on to London. Because the areas where the crate had been stored were not properly heated and the crate had at times been kept upside down, Robson suffered greatly on his four-day journey, at times even slipping in and out of consciousness. [3] It took him several days to recover in a hospital in Los Angeles. [4]
Robson settled down in his native Wales, retiring at the age of 60. [5] In 2021, he wrote a book about his experience called The Crate Escape. [6]
Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician Robert-Houdin (1805–1871).
Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and commonly known as Pan Am, was an American airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States for much of the 20th century. It was the first airline to fly worldwide and pioneered numerous innovations of the modern airline industry, such as jumbo jets and computerized reservation systems. Until its dissolution on December 4, 1991, Pan Am "epitomized the luxury and glamour of intercontinental travel", and it remains a cultural icon of the 20th century, identified by its blue globe logo, the use of the word "Clipper" in its aircraft names and call signs, and the white uniform caps of its pilots.
The Tenerife airport disaster occurred on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747 passenger jets collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife. The collision occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway. The impact and resulting fire killed everyone on board KLM 4805 and most of the occupants of Pan Am 1736, with only 61 survivors in the front section of the aircraft. With 583 fatalities, the disaster is the deadliest accident in aviation history.
A stowaway or clandestine traveller is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as a ship, an aircraft, a train, cargo truck or bus.
The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a large long-range airliner developed from the C-97 Stratofreighter military transport, itself a derivative of the B-29 Superfortress. The Stratocruiser's first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced for its day; its relatively innovative features included two passenger decks and a pressurized cabin. It could carry up to 100 passengers on the main deck plus 14 in the lower deck lounge; typical seating was for 63 or 84 passengers or 28 berthed and five seated passengers.
Pan Am Flight 73 was a Pan American World Airways flight from Bombay, India, to New York, United States with scheduled stops in Karachi, Pakistan and Frankfurt, West Germany.
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was a German passenger-carrying hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. The ship was named after the German airship pioneer Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a count in the German nobility. It was conceived and operated by Hugo Eckener, the chairman of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.
Edwin Charles Musick was chief pilot for Pan American World Airways and pioneered many of Pan Am's transoceanic routes including the famous route across the Pacific Ocean on the China Clipper.
Eddie August Henry Schneider was an American aviator who set three transcontinental airspeed records for pilots under the age of twenty-one in 1930. His plane was a Cessna Model AW with a Warner-Scarab engine, one of only 48 built, that he called "The Kangaroo". He set the east-to-west, then the west-to-east, and the combined round trip record. He was the youngest certificated pilot in the United States, and the youngest certified airplane mechanic. He was a pilot in the Spanish Civil War in the Yankee Squadron. He died in an airplane crash in 1940, while training another pilot, when a Boeing-Stearman Model 75 belonging to the United States Navy Reserve overtook him and clipped his plane's tail at Floyd Bennett Field.
Mark Robson was a Canadian-American film director, producer, and editor. Robson began his 45-year career in Hollywood as a film editor. He later began working as a director and producer. He directed 34 films during his career, including Champion (1949), Bright Victory (1951), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), Peyton Place (1957), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Von Ryan's Express (1965), Valley of the Dolls (1967), and Earthquake (1974).
Lincoln Beachey was a pioneer American aviator and barnstormer. He became famous and wealthy from flying exhibitions, staging aerial stunts, helping invent aerobatics, and setting aviation records.
Human mail is the transportation of a person through the postal system, usually as a stowaway. While rare, there have been some reported cases of people attempting to travel through the mail.
Pan Am Flight 7 was a westbound round-the-world flight operated by Pan American World Airways. On November 8, 1957, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser 10-29 serving the flight, named Clipper Romance of the Skies, crashed in the Pacific Ocean en route to Honolulu International Airport from San Francisco. The crash killed all 36 passengers and 8 crew members.
Single-Handed is a 1953 British war film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Jeffrey Hunter, Michael Rennie and Wendy Hiller. It is based on the 1929 novel Brown on Resolution by C. S. Forester. Set largely in the Pacific, Hunter stars as a Canadian sailor serving on a British warship who battles single-handedly to delay a German World War II warship long enough for the Royal Navy to bring it to battle. The film was released in the United States as Sailor of the King.
The Inspector is a 1962 CinemaScope DeLuxe Color British-American drama film directed by Philip Dunne, starring Stephen Boyd and Dolores Hart. Hart plays Lisa Held, a Dutch-Jewish girl who has survived the horror of Auschwitz concentration camp.
The 1910 London to Manchester air race took place between two aviators, each of whom attempted to win a heavier-than-air powered flight challenge between London and Manchester. The race had first been proposed by the Daily Mail newspaper in 1906. The £10,000 prize was won in April 1910 by Frenchman Louis Paulhan.
Pan Am is an American period drama television series created by writer Jack Orman. Named for the iconic Pan American World Airways, the series features the aircraft pilots and stewardesses of the airline as it operated in the early 1960s at the beginning of the commercial Jet Age.
Cuban Power, also known as El Poder Cubano or United Cuban Power was an anti-Castro terrorist group that conducted bombings against Cuban targets and states and entities they felt to be sympathetic to the Castro regime through early and mid-1968.
The following events occurred in December 1973:
A transpacific flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Pacific Ocean from Australasia, East and Southeast Asia to North America, Latin America, or vice versa. Such flights have been made by fixed-wing aircraft, balloons and other types of aircraft.