Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1919 — Early Aviation Flight. [ARTICLE]

Early Aviation Flight.

One may be reasonably surprised that interest in aviation has not sooner revived, as a curiosity of the past, the legend of Alexander. the Great ! and his youthful ascent in a small car drawn by gryphons. The legend was widely current in the middle ages, and many who heard it doubtless believed that Alexander’s “gryhoplane,” as a modern headline writer cheerfully calls it, had attained an altitude which would make the record ascension of modern aviation seem like a childish experiment. Gryphons, as those who know their “Alice in Wonderland” will remember, were odd birds, and Alexander, an adventurous boy of twelve, was said to have harnessed two of them to a basket of rushes and been carried to a height of 917,654 feet, returning to meet a protesting parent, who asked him “how long he expected to keep up his infantile tricks.” —Christian Science Monitor.