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Swanson's frozen meals first appeared in 1954. Hint: Placing the TV dinner in a decorative basket is not going to help.

While most people think of Swanson’s when they think of frozen dinners, the idea originated with Maxson Food Systems, Inc. New York inventor William Maxson wasn’t thinking of bachelors or busy working moms, though; he was thinking of airline passengers. As the New York Times reported on September 19, 1946, Maxson’s commercially marketed “Strato Meal” was “the same thing as Sky Plate, 500,000 of which have been served all over the world on planes of the Naval Air Transport Service and to passengers of Pan American Airways.” The Strato Meal, according to the Times, was a complete dinner-on-a-plate that included “a single serving of meat and vegetable…arranged on a tri-partitioned, paper-fiber container.”

The New Yorker ran a profile on Maxson in August 1945: He “has been a grandfather for five months, closely resembles Henry VIII, and is left-handed.” The article went on to mention Maxson’s other inventions, which included a multiple machine-gun mount used by the Army, and “an aerial-navigation instrument too complicated to describe in these pages.”

Ready to eat after 15 minutes in Maxson's specially designed oven. Originally appeared in the New York Times, April 11, 1945.

The original Sky Plates were “defrozen” in something called “Maxson’s Whirlwind,” which used a 24-volt D.C. motor, standard in aircraft of the time. The unit could heat six plates, although Maxson had created a device that could heat 120 at a time for a cargo ship for the War Shipping Administration.

The New Yorker article noted that Maxson got the idea of frozen dinners when he grew a surplus of cauliflower. “He cooked and froze a little (for some reason) and upon tasting it a year later (for some reason) found that it was delicious. Now he never touches fresh food at home except for an occasional salad. His dinner guests are taken into his freezer and allowed to pick out just what they feel they’d like; one may take egg foo-young, another oyster stew, another curried chicken, and so on. None of this nonsense of everybody at the table eating the same thing.”

Painting of Titanic sinking from the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

Admit it: You thought text messaging began with the advent of mobile phones. Not so, claims maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham in his new book, Titanic Tragedy: A New Look at the Lost Liner. Maxtone-Graham writes:

Years before cell phones, Marconi men [shipboard telegraphers] were the first texters: OM or OB (old man or old boy) was a commonly transmitted preliminary…. They employed a host of other time-saving shortcuts. STBI meant standby, GE and GN, respectively, “good evening” and “good night.” Some abbreviations were culled from other languages: C signaled “yes.” DE, doubtless pinched from the French, meant “from.” N was “no,” “you” became U, and R was “are.” The word “message” was shortened to MSG, “traffic” to TFC. “Best regards” was conveyed enigmatically by the number 73, akin to later CB enthusiasts’ 10-4. Later, when female operators were recruited, “love and kisses” was signified by 88. Disparagements had their own coded pejorative: LID branded an inept telegrapher as a “poor operator,” QRL meant “keep quiet, I’m busy,” and GTH a pithier “go to hell.” The abrupt torrent GTHOMQRL said it all: “Go to hell, old man, I’m busy.” A gentler sign-off might be TUOMGN: “Thank you, old man, good night.”

The AH-64 Apache Longbow attack helicopter. Courtesy Boeing.

And what has this got to do with aviation? Modern military pilots text one another, even in the middle of battle. As Ed Macy explains in Apache, crews use a secure text messaging system consisting of four lines of text and 176 character spaces. Macy and his fellow Apache pilots would often text one another in order to minimize the chatter on the Apache helicopter network, giving updates, for instance, on their remaining weaponry. A pilot might send the message: 40*30MM, 0*HEISAP, 8*FLECH, 0*HELLF. (Translation: The Apache was down to 40 30-millimeter cannon rounds, was out of High Explosive Incendiary Semi-Armour Piercing rockets, had 8 remaining Flechette rockets, and no more Hellfire laser-guided missiles.)

What’s next? NakedSecurity reported in February that the U.S. military is in line to get Smartphones cleared for secret dispatches. “The United States,” reports Lisa Vaas, “which currently forbids government workers or soldiers to use smartphones to send classified messages, is preparing a modified version of Google’s Android operating system that will meet its security certifications…. While pinpointing fellow infantrymen would be a boon, the military has to ensure that soldiers aren’t simultaneously broadcasting their own GPS coordinates to enemy combatants. Weather apps, for example, automatically transmit a phone’s GPS coordinates in order to deliver a local forecast.”

Why aren't we getting DHL packages like this? Three racehorses relax in their open pen as they await loading. Courtesy Horse America, Inc.

This Saturday is the 138th running of the Kentucky Derby, also known as “the most exciting two minutes in sports.” Sure, early favorites Bodemeister, Gemologist, and Union Rags are prepared to give their all on the one-and-a-quarter-mile track. But how do they get to Churchill Downs in the first place?

Many of them fly to Louisville on all-horse charters. “Equine shipping is big business,” says Andrea Branchini, manager of Horse America, Inc., who has shipped horses to domestic and international locations for more than 25 years.

“You can ship one horse by itself,” he continues, “but usually you try to minimize the cost to the owner by having shares. Horses can travel on regular cargo services on scheduled service carriers, or you can do an all-horses charter, a flight with only horses.”

Author Susan Nusser describes the scene in her new book Kentucky Derby Dreams: The Making of Thoroughbred Champions (Thomas Dunne Books, 2012): “One by one, the vans pull up at the loading ramp. Tall wooden boards slide onto its sides so the horses can’t see over. As the vans pull up, the crew disassembles and reassembles the base of the ramp so that the horses step right onto it from the van without ever seeing the ground. From the ground, the only thing you can see are the very tips of their ears, and sometimes a nose from a horse who’s lifted it up to sniff the air.”

Enjoying refreshments while waiting for the flight to begin. Courtesy Horse America, Inc.

Horses’ grooms usually travel with them in the aircraft, but an equine celebrity may boast a larger entourage. When Triple Crown winner Secretariat retired from racing in 1974, he was flown to Kentucky to begin his post-racetrack career at a stud farm. On the flight he was accompanied by his trainer Lucien Laurin, owner Penny Chenery, his groom Eddie Sweat, and photographer Raymond Woolfe Jr. As Jennifer Wirth noted in The Saturday Post, “As Secretariat’s plane headed for the Bluegrass Airport, the airport tower reportedly called to the pilot, Dan Neff, ‘There’s more people out here to meet Secretariat than there was to greet the governor.’ The pilot allegedly responded, ‘Well, he’s won more races than the governor.’ ” During the flight, a nervous Secretariat clutched at Sweat’s jacket, sucking the fabric for comfort (below).

Secretariat and his groom, Eddie Sweat, on the retired Triple Crown champ's flight to Kentucky. Photograph copyright Raymond Woolfe Jr.

Have a spare $4,000 and can’t figure out what to spend it on? How about a plastic Snoopy astronaut doll, signed by Apollo 10 commander Tom Stafford? If that wasn’t exactly what you were looking for, there were hundreds of other items to be had at Bonhams’ fourth annual space history auction, held April 26: A painting by astronaut Alan Bean of Apollo 16 astronaut John Young leaping into history ($68,500); a rare Soviet space suit used during the 1969 docking of Soyuz 4 and 5 ($46,250); early Russian space posters (To Space—the Soviet way!—$1,500); a copy of Octave Chanute’s 1899 book Progress in Flying Machines, signed by the author himself ($1,187). See a few highlights from the auction, below.

One of the Apollo program's iconic images: Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon. Image courtesy Bonhams.

This well-known image of Buzz Aldrin, taken on July 20, 1969 by Neil Armstrong, went for $5,250. The 16 x 20 inch photograph was signed and dated by Aldrin, the Apollo 11 lunar module pilot and second human to set foot on the moon.

When Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis at Le Bourget, completing the world’s first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, the aircraft’s fuselage fabric was badly torn by souvenir-hunters. “I could feel the Spirit of St. Louis tremble with the pressure of the crowd,” Lindbergh would later write. “I heard the crack of wood behind me when someone leaned too heavily against a fairing strip. Then a second strip snapped, and a third, and there was the sound of tearing fabric…. It was essential to get a guard stationed around my plane before more damage was done.” This 4 x 5 inch piece of fabric, below—which went for $2,000—is believed to be from that historic day.

Fragment of silver-coated textile with a black-and-white photograph of Louis Bleriot congratulating Charles Lindbergh on his transatlantic flight. Image courtesy Bonhams.

This 1964, 250-page Project Gemini manual—signed by Buzz Aldrin, Gordon Cooper, Gene Cernan, Richard Gordon, Wally Schirra, Dave Scott, and Tom Stafford—was issued to both astronauts and support personnel. The manual, which includes fold-out schematics and diagrams, went for $9,375.

This 1964 copy of a Project Gemini familiarization manual went for $9,375. Image courtesy Bonhams.

Looking for something a little larger? How about a nearly 8-foot-tall prototype lunar flagpole? Bonhams’ catalog notes, “About 3 months before Apollo 11, [director] Robert Giruth asked [the Manned Spacecraft Center's] Technical Services Division to design a flagpole that could support the U.S. flag in an environment with no atmosphere. It had to be lightweight, compact, and easily assembled by astronauts wearing pressurized space suits.

The prototype of the flag and staff placed on the Moon by the Apollo 11 crew fetched $43,750. Image courtesy Bonhams.

The team came up with a flagpole very similar to the present example. The Apollo 11 flagpole was attached to the left-hand side of [the lunar module] Eagle’s ladder, and was protected from the heat of Eagle’s descent engines by a special heatproof shield. [Buzz] Aldrin has commented [in Apollo Expeditions to the Moon], ‘It took both of us to set it up and it was nearly a disaster…. As hard as we tried, the telescope wouldn’t fully extend. Thus the flag which should have been flat, had its own unique permanent wave. Then to our dismay the staff of the pole wouldn’t go far enough into the lunar surface to support itself in an upright position. After much struggling we finally coaxed it to remain upright, but in a most precarious position. I dreaded the possibility of the American flag collapsing into the lunar dust in front of the television camera.’”

A steel surplus petal, identical to the four on Luna 9, sold for $4,000. Image courtesy Bonhams.

In 1966, the Soviets achieved the first soft landing on the Moon with their unmanned spacecraft Luna 9, which was also the first spacecraft to transmit images from the lunar surface. After the spacecraft landed, four petals that covered the top half of the vessel opened outward, helping to stabilize the craft on the Moon’s surface. One surplus petal, identical to the four on Luna 9, sold at auction for $4,000.

One of the most beautiful items at the auction was this lunar planning chart, signed by a member of each Apollo lunar landing crew. The chart, which indicates every Apollo lunar landing site, also includes written notes by the astronauts about their various flights. “A dream of mankind becomes true!” writes Buzz Aldrin. The 45 x 42 inch chart sold at auction for $62,500.

A lunar planning chart—signed by a member of each Apollo lunar landing crew—sold for $62,500. Image courtesy Bonhams.

Crowds surround Howard Hughes' Lockheed Model 14-N2 Super Electra, after the aviator's 1938 round-the-world flight. Courtesy NASM.

In 1938, Howard Hughes and his crew set a world record by circumnavigating the globe in just 91 hours (3 days, 19 hours). They took off from New York City in a Lockheed Super Electra, and co-pilot and navigator Thomas Thurlow wasn’t too happy with Hughes’ piloting:

When Howard first cracked the throttles, it felt to me like the ship was tied. I pushed with everything and swore at Howard for not pouring on more power in a hurry. I felt uneasy when we hit the runway and were doing only a scant twenty, if that. From then on the run lasted for an eternity. I was relieved when the ship felt light, but at the same time I knew we were about out of runway.

The aircraft was fitted with cutting-edge radio and navigational equipment, including a “navigation robot” invented by W.L. Maxon, which could calculate the user’s exact geographic location. Thurlow, then a lieutenant with the U.S. Army Air Corps, was “loaned” to Hughes for the record-setting attempt, as he understood how to use the Maxson navigator better than anyone.

The crew at the end of the record-setting flight. Lieutenant Thomas Thurlow is on the far right. Howard Hughes is second from left. Courtesy Tamara Thurlow Field.

It was the first time the device was used on a civilian airplane. If successful, it would be installed in Army bombers. “While the Hughes flight is a remarkable tribute to powerful and reliable motors,” noted the July 23, 1938 Science News Letter, “it is to this robot navigation computer that much of the success of the flight is credited. No matter how well a plane may fly, or how easily, it matters little if the navigators cannot, at all times, exactly fix the plane’s position and plot the proper direction over distances of thousands of miles.”

Thurlow’s granddaughter, Tamara Thurlow Field, has just published Thurlow’s diary of the attempt (Flying With Howard Hughes). While the diary isn’t very long, it provides a candid look at the billionaire pilot, and gives new details about the record-setting flight. Thurlow mentions that Hughes became uneasy as the aircraft approached Paris: “It is a natural reaction suffered by pilots who have not done a great deal of navigation flying in which the navigator has complete directional control of the airplane and the only knowledge of position,” wrote Thurlow. “I was amused, but felt guilty about it. Howard’s responsibility was a great one, and the obvious fatigue from which he was suffering was not helping matters any.”

The team’s effort would win Hughes the Harmon Trophy as well as the Collier.