Travel Thursday!
In honor of the late G. Gordon Liddy, how about a tour of the Watergate Hotel?
Bonus #1: I’m kind of bending one of my own rules here, but I’m thinking of this less as military history and more as “also inspired by current events”.
The Battleship New Jersey folks put up a video the other day about transiting the Suez and Panama canals.
Bonus #2: What the heck, let’s do some more ships. From the “Great British Royal Ships” series, “RMS Queen Mary”.
Travel Thursday!
Today, we journey to the Outer Limit.
Well, actually, not that one, though these folks did manage to control the horizontal and the vertical.
This is a vintage (1969) promo film from Boeing, “The Outer Limit”, about the flight testing and introduction of the 747.
I’m fudging the definition of travel a bit with that one, but it is short. The next one is, admittedly, long, but it lets me cross another state off the list, and it is a place I enjoy visiting.
“The City of Las Vegas, the Early Years”. This covers the period from 1905 to 1920. See? Who says Vegas doesn’t have a sense of history?
Bonus: I’ve griped before about the hard hat tour of Hoover Dam (which I was lucky enough to go on) and how it was shut down after 9/11. Well, here’s a video (a little over 30 minutes long) of the hard hat tour from March 2001.
“If you’re going home by plane, wear the hard hat on the plane. It scares the heck out of the other passengers.” Man, wasn’t that a simpler time?
Travel Thursday!
I’ve been neglecting the United States. Technically, I still am, as today’s presentation is a place that isn’t a state: the place that my sister and her family refer to as “WashingtonDCOurNation’sCapital” (all one word).
From 1945, “The District of Columbia”, part of the “This Land Of Ours” series.
Bonus: and if you liked that one, here’s another one from 1954 and Esso (aka “Standard Oil Company of New Jersey”). “Welcome to Washington”.
Travel Thursday!
Have you ever considered exotic Pakistan as a destination? No? Let’s change that!
“New Horizons: Pakistan” from our friends at Pan Am sometime in the 1960s.
I bet it was a lot easier to bring home a little souvenir from the Khyber Pass back then, too.
Bonus: “Flying with the KLM from Amsterdam to Paris in 1929 in color!” As I understand it from the YouTube description, this is originally from 1929, but the poster (Rick88888888) has done a lot of work: “motion-stabilized, speed-corrected, A.I. enhanced and A.I. colorized”.
Travel Thursday!
Would you like to fly in my beautiful balloon? Or if not that, a passenger airplane from the 1950s?
From those wonderful folks at TWA, “Flight To California”.
Bonus, plus CanCon! “The Mother of Rivers”, about the Columbia River ice field. Made about 1947 for the Canadian National Railways by our old friends at the National Film Board of Canada.
Bonus #2: Again, I’m stretching the definition of travel, but this involves planes and is short. Have you ever wanted to see a Boeing 747-8 fully loaded abort a takeoff at 200 MPH? Using only the brakes, no reverse thrust? And by the way, the brakes are worn down to the metal studs?
Travel Thursday!
I can’t find any evidence I’ve used this before. Google doesn’t return any results when I search my site, but I’m not sure how it escaped me for this long.
“Pan Am’s World”, a vintage 1970s promo film.
Bonus: this is something called “Flight Into Time” from the 1950s and TWA. The unifying theme is travel through the Mediterranean and the area around it: Portugal, Spain, Italy, Israel, Syria & Egypt.
Bonus bonus: Constellations!
Travel Thursday!
This is slightly less timely than I would have liked: I would have used this last week, but it wasn’t uploaded then.
There was a TV series called “Vagabond” back during the 1950s, hosted by a former child star named “Bill Burrud”. This episode is about Mardi Gras. And even better, it is in color!
Bonus video: in keeping with the theme, and offering something more recent, here’s something called “NOPD: Mardi Gras” which is exactly what it says on the tin: New Orleans Police Department officers patrolling during Mardi Gras in 2006.
Travel Thursday!
Here’s something really vintage for you: “Coast to Coast in 48 Hours”, featuring travel by train and Ford TriMotor from New York to LA at a blistering pace.
Bonus video #1: One of my bucket list items is to visit the highest point in each state. Or at least as many as I can: I have my doubts I will be climbing Denali at my age.
Anyway, “What is the Highest Point in Each State of the USA?” a visual tour.
Bonus video #2: I’m not quite sure I agree with the title of this video, but it has 747s and music by Windham Hill, so why not? “The World’s Best Pan Am 747 Video”.
Travel Thursday!
This is maybe a little marginal on the travel side, but I feel like it is close enough to count: “Operation Jetliner”, a 1959 United “Breaks Guitars” Airlines promo film for their DC-8.
Bonus: This is definitely travel, and should push a few buttons for at least one person in my audience. Another vintage Pan Am promo video…
…”USSR”. No kidding, this is a promo film for travel to the USSR in the late 1960s.
“Come see the cemetery where famous writers, artists, and musicians are buried every day except Thursday.”
There does not appear to be any footage of the gulags in that video.
Travel Thursday!
You know, when you travel, you have to stay somewhere. I guess you could sleep outdoors, but that’s a good way to get robbed or rousted by the po-lice.
So you need to sleep somewhere. Like a hotel or motel.
(I thought the movie was a little twee, but I do like that scene.)
From 1962, “The Great Tradition”, a promo film for the American Hotel Association.
Bonus: Another one I’m pretty sure I haven’t used (and I think I’d remember: it doesn’t turn up in a search): “Wings to Viking Land”. Really, “Viking Land”.
I kind of feel like the original Vikings were not served meals from Maxim’s of Paris, coming or going. But hey, what do I know?
Travel Thursday!
I’m 99 44/100ths percent sure I haven’t used this one before, and I feel like I’m reaching the end of the string of Pan Am videos. So…
“Wings To Europe: Grand Tour” from 1959.
Bonus: ’tis the season. Let’s go skiing!
“Winter Olympic Playground 1960” is a vintage promo film for Squaw Valley, California, and the facilities there. Squaw Valley was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, and is about 40 miles from Reno. (The film was done by the Harrah’s Club casino in Reno: it looks like it was still there when I was there (with a slight name change), but it closed permanently in March of 2020.)
Travel Thursday!
Today, a couple of exotic destinations. “Wings Over The West Indies” from our good friends at Pan Am. What makes this interesting is that it is from the 1940s, and features the Sikorsky S-40 flying boat.
And, for a little dose of something slightly more recent and in color…”Wings to Yugoslavia”, also from Pan Am, but this time dating to the 1960s.
One more fun one: “Up and Over”, a promo film made by Sikorsky promoting Los Angeles Airways (LAA). LAA provided helicopter service from various points around LA to the airports and to Disneyland. They also carried mail.
The YouTube notes mention that they went out of business in 1971 after an acquisition with Golden West Airlines failed. What the notes don’t mention is that they had two bad crashes almost back to back (May 22, 1968 and August 14, 1968) that killed a total of 44 people. Which may have been a contributing factor…