AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

            The Macchi M.18 ARs of the Italian Royal Navy by Gianclaudio Polidori  After the WWI experience with the Nave (Ship) Elba, the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) wanted to improve the capabilities of her maritime reconnaissance service with up-to-date assets. In 1925, the railroad carriage civilian ferry ship Città di Messina was purchased and converted into a seaplane-tender ship named Giuseppe Miraglia, in honor of an Italian Navy pilot who had died in 1915. During the conversion work, the ship was damaged because, due to the water it had collected after heavy rains and the unbalancing of weights created by the ongoing work, it listed and sank in the shipyard. When the Giuseppe Miraglia was finally completed, it was equipped with two catapults, ample hangars for the aircraft and good defensive armament consisting first in four 102/35 guns, to which twelve mm 13,2 Breda Model 31 were added later. Nave Giuseppe Miraglia Twenty-f...

      Fig trees , aromatic plants, donkeys and horses  and foxes and pigs  can all be found in the Garden of God, that is the English version of a book, written in Italian by Fr. Claudio Doglio , in which he writes about all the plants and animals that are mentioned in the Scriptures. If you click on the links, you will find several chapters excerpted from the book and translated into English. The following one though, deals with small somewhat creepy and bothersome creatures that also appear in the Bible. They represent the minor problems in our lives that can eat away at our spirit or prod us to move in the right direction. Your comments, as usual, will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, L. Pavese   Small pesky critters by Fr. Claudio Doglio Small irritating animals often figure in the Bible as punishments. That happens in several cases of the so-called “plagues of Egypt,” where frogs (Exodus 7,26-8,11), mosquitos (Exodus 8,12-15), flies (Exodus 8,16-...