When Pigs Fly Day
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A Weathervane I spotted in Maine on one of our trips back East.
“But the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don’t believe in sensible rules
And won’t believe what sensible people say
And because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes
Keep building up impossible hopes
Impossible things are happening every day!”
From ‘Cinderella’ - Rodgers & Hammerstein (1956-57)
September 9th holidays include National Teddy Bear Day, International Sudoku Day, International Buy a Priest a Beer Day, and Weinerschnitzel Day. It’s also historically commemorated as the day Mary Stuart was crowned as Queen of Scots in 1543. All of those are probably equally worthy of celebration, but I found an even more obscure and weirder holiday to celebrate… When Pigs Fly Day.
Aren’t the skies already pretty full of flying objects?
It might seem a weird thing to celebrate, but I love the concept… embracing the impossible. Breaking the sound barrier, splitting the atom, atomic energy, the light bulb, the radio, the television, space travel… the list of ‘impossibles’ made possible is endless.
The notion that a heavier-than-air object, never mind one with a man inside, could defy all the laws of gravity and could fly in the sky was considered ridiculous… preposterous… laughable... absolutely absurd. So outrageous, in fact, the New York Times published an editorial entitled "Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly" on October 9, 1903 that claimed such an invention would take "from one million to ten million years — provided we can eliminate ... the existing relation between weight and strength in inorganic materials." According to Wiki, “Sixty-nine days after the article's publication, the Wright Brothers successfully achieved the first heavier-than-air flight on December 17, 1903.” Well, didn’t that leave a little egg on NYT’s editorial face?
So what’s coming next? Living on the moon or Mars? Longer lives through chemistry? Teleportation? Invisibility? A scary thought… AI controlling the world? Maybe not in our lifetimes, but perhaps eventually… if humans can manage not to destroy Earth, that is.
So will pigs ever fly? Actually, one did! The British aviator John Moore-Brabazon, the first Englishman to fly a powered aircraft in England, flew a six‑week‑old piglet named Icarus II, a distance of 3.5 miles in a basket attached to the wing strut of his Short Brothers biplane at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. Never say never.
