Space, The Anniversary Is Here

Fifty years ago today, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, in four hours and fifty-six minutes.

Of course, he didn’t have to wait for his luggage.

29 million pieces of luggage were delayed, damaged or lost last year.  Enough to clothe a third world country.  According to this site,

The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama is considered one of that state’s largest tourist attractions. This is where unclaimed luggage and the items inside are auctioned off. Their website offers a peek inside the bag to know what real people purchased and how much they paid for unclaimed items. According to the staff at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, some of the more unusual items they have found include: a live rattlesnake, Egyptian artifacts, and a full set of armor.

Pity the poor man in India, a Mr Mathur, who watched his suitcase disappear into the x-ray machine, never to emerge. He had waited a week by the time of this report, surviving on tea & biscuits […] and helping out the local police personnel by doing odd jobs.  He was prepared to wait a month.  He even offered to climb inside the X Ray machine to have a look, but security officials restrained him.  Mr Mathur was not impressed by the airport’s offer of compensation: a plastic dutyfree bag and a bottle of mineral water.

An airport policeman said that small bags do get lost every now & then within the machine.

My favourite part of this story is not the rather worrying assertion from an aviation expert that Fate plays a large role in delivering baggage safely; it is this:

Representatives of the Low Cost Carrier issued a statement that they do not expect their passengers to carry anything valuable in their luggages. “Let us face it, if they had valuables in their baggage, they would probably be flying some other airline.”

At the age of 77, John Glenn set a new record when he became the oldest person to go into space.  I wonder if he saw Mr Mathur’s suitcase while he was out there?

I think Bob Hope deserves the last word:

“I’ve been to almost as many places,” he once remarked, “as my luggage.”

Related articles

• 105 passports found from unclaimed baggage at IGI (traffickingnews.wordpress.com)
• Photos: 50th Anniversary: John Glenn’s Earth Orbit (abcnews.go.com)

Joke 333

I went to a seafood disco last week and pulled a muscle.

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