Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 314, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1920 — 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 was said to have harnessed two of them to a basket of rushes and beep carried to a height of 917.654 feet, returning so meet a protesting parent, who asked him “how long he expected to keep up his infantile tricks.” —Christian Science Monitor.