AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

    The Savoia Marchetti S.81 bis.         The picture above the headlines portrays the S. 81 bis, an almost unknown version of the Savoia Marchetti S.81 Pipistrello (Bat), a very important, ubiquitous  Italian bomber that fought in the Ethiopian campaign, in the Spanish Civil War and in all the theaters of the Second World War in which the Regia Aeronautica was engaged (and, later, even with the Luftwaffe). The S.81 prototype At or around the end of 1934 and the beginning of 1935, when the production of the Savoia Marchetti S. 73B (Belgium) airliner for SABENA began, the S.73's were advertised as derivatives of the S. 81 Pipistrello bomber which, meanwhile, had reached the flight test stage of its development; but the three-engined S. 73 airliner did not derive from the bomber at all. In fact, as late as September of 1934, the 18 passenger airliner version of the S.81 was still referred to as the S. 73C (Civile, that is, commerci...

Soulbrush A NON - POLITICALLY - CORRECT PORTRAIT OF NELSON MANDELA.   By Marco Respinti (translated by L. Pavese) Good confessors tell the sinners, who are determined to change, that a long period of abstinence is equivalent to a second virginity. Maybe that’s the reason why the “canonization,” while he was still living, of Nelson Mandela made everybody forget his true origins. But that’s why good journalists exist. Nelson Mandela’s real name was Rolihlahla Dalibhunga, and he was a prince of the cadet branch of the xhosa speaking line of Thembus. He was born on July 18, 1918 on the shore of the river Mbashe, in the district of Umtata, in Tembuland, capital of Transkei (the former Bantustan), in the south-eastern Republic of South Africa, which has been  independent since 1979. The family moved to Qunu, where many still think he was born, when his father lost his succession rights to the throne and fell out of favor with the colonial authorities. In elementary...