Tom: I'm with Simon Willison, zeppelin expert.
Simon: Hello!
Tom: Simon, tell them something they don't know.
Simon: So..
In 1910 the airship America
made the first ever attempt at a cross Atlantic crossing.
And, on the way into the airship one of the engineers scooped up a stray cat,
who'd been living in the hangar.
The cat, they,
they christened the cat Kiddo, put him on the airship.
Said: "This will be great, we'll take him along, he can be the ship's mascot."
Kiddo was not keen on this idea at all,
kicked up a real stink,
and so once they got out of the Atlantic they transmitted the first ever radio message from an aircraft,
and the message was: "Roy, come and fetch this goddamn cat.""
So, they sent a life boat out to fetch the cat.
The cat was put in a bag, lowered down to a boat, really jumpy water,
the cat was furious, the waves were too choppy,
they couldn't rescue him.
They ended up having to hoist him back on board.
"So, okay, we'll take him with."
The cat then settled down,
obviously deciding the airship was a lot better than the bag.
And, you know, it settled into the flight.
They quickly discovered that he was the perfect companion,
because cats are better than barometers:
the cat would get grumpy before they hit bad weather,
way before any of their instruments could detect it.
That was all fine, but they were trying to cross the Atlantic.
33 hours in, the airship broke,--
possibly because of sand that they picked up earlier--
they couldn't steer it, they found themselves adrift.
They eventually spotted a Royal Mail ship out at sea,
managed to signal SOS to them,
got rescued by it.
And I think they made the first ever aerial SOS call as well.
And they were rescued, along with the cat.
The airship floated off and was never seen again.
The Royal Mail ship went back to New York,
where Kiddo was put on display in the window of a fancy department store with a diamond necklace on
as a celebrity cat,
and he really did live the rest of his life out on the farm.
Tom: Simon, thank you very much! That is something you might not have known.
Simon: Thank you!
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