NOISELESS AIRPLANES AVIATION'S GOAL
A few weeks ago, an airmail plane roaring through the night
received a charge of buckshot dangerously close to its motors. Visions of the
first plane hold-up, so often depicted by fiction writers, were dispelled when
investigation showed that an irate farmer had used this means of discouraging
planes from flying over his land. He said the deafening noise bothered his hens
and caused them to stop laying.
He was the first to express his dissatisfaction in such
sensational form, but millions of people are becoming intolerant of the noise
created by airplanes. Both the airplane-riding public and the millions who must
hear this noise from the ground are demanding that planes be silenced. Science
is attempting to accomplish this, but engineers at work on the problem are
finding it one of the most baffling confronting aviation today.
UR YIELDS OLD GODS AND ROYAL TOMBS
The body of a baby girl, adorned with a little gold headdress
almost exactly like that worn by Queen Shub-ad of Ur, is one of the new
discoveries in the royal graves at Ur of the Chaldees, according to a report
just received from C. Leonard Woolley, director of the joint expedition of the
University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum.
This 5,000-year-old grave, which Mr. Woolley suggests might be called the grave
of the baby princess, contained also a set of miniature silver dishes, including
a tumbler and bowls. The royal headdress, which attracted much attention last
season when discovered with the remains of the Queen, is a delicate and
elaborate structure of gold ribbon, gold leaves, and flowers with pointed
petals.
GOOD AS NEON LIGHTS
Red neon lights, suggested as beacons for airports, are not
any better able to penetrate fog, as its advocates have claimed, than ordinary
incandescent lamps equipped with colored screens. This was announced by Dr.
Lyman J. Briggs of the U.S. Bureau of Standards. Neon lights are familiar to
everyone because they are used in the newest tubular advertising signs.
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