Posted on 11/12/2002 2:58:41 PM PST by SixString
New bra has a built-in gun holster An American inventor has produced a bra with a built-in gun holster.The underwear is designed to hold a .38 calibre snub-nose revolver and pepper spray.
The $30 (£20.90) bra is the brainchild of Beverly Hills security consultant Paxton Quigley.
"Women like the idea of comfort and its ease of access," she told the Washington Times newspaper.
Many states in America allow people to carry "concealed" handguns as protection, although Miss Quigley's device is probably the first to use women's underwear as a holster.
"If a woman is attacked, the purse is the first thing taken from her," she said. "A good place to conceal a weapon is in the chest area."
Described as "equal parts Victoria's Secret and Guns & Ammo magazine", in reference to the American lingerie chain and top-selling firearms magazine, the bra is available in utilitarian black or white.
It is strictly functional though - no lace, no underwiring and the only choice other than size is whether women fire with their left or right hands.
Designed to hold a gun on one side and a pepper spray on the other, its dual-capability makes it legal virtually everywhere in America, where pepper spray can be carried by civilians as well as police.
Miss Quigley, who has written two books on gun safety and self-defence for women and trained actress Geena Davis for her role in the film Thelma and Louise, has dubbed her invention the SuperBra.
Story filed: 15:07 Wednesday 25th April 2001
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
Who Were the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II ?
The Tuskegee Airmen were dedicated, determined young men who volunteered to become America's first black military airmen. They came from every section of America, with large numbers coming from New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit. Each one possessed a strong personal desire to serve the United States of America proudly and to the best of his ability as an airman, even while many other Americans felt that black men lacked intelligence, skill, courage and patriotism.Those who possessed the physical and mental qualifications and were accepted for aviation cadet training were trained initially to be pilots, and later to be either pilots, navigators, or bombardiers. Most were college graduates or undergraduates, while the remainder demonstrated their academic qualifications through comprehensive entrance examinations. No standards were lowered for those black pilots and other airmen trained as operations officers, meteorologists, intelligence officers, engineering officers, flight surgeons, etc. Still others were trained to be aircraft and engine mechanics, armament specialists, radio repairmen, parachute riggers, control tower operators, administrators and for every other type of skill necessary to function as an air force squadron, or ground support unit.
The black airmen who became single- or multi-engine pilots were trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field (TAAF) in Tuskegee Alabama. The first aviation cadet class began in July 1941 and completed its training nine months later in March 1942. Thirteen started in the first class. Five successfully completed the training, including Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., a West Point graduate. The other four were commissioned second lieutenants, and all five received Army Air Corps silver pilot wings. From 1942 until 1946, nine hundred and ninety-two black- Americans graduated in aviation cadet classes at TAAF, and also received commissions and pilot's wings...
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The 332nd Fighter Group, consisted of four squadrons of black fighter pilots who had to fight not only the Luftwaffe, but also the U.S. Army Air Corp before they could gain recognition.
About the Author
Stanley Weisleder heads his own actuarial consulting firm, Actuaries Unlimited, Inc. He is also a reserve deputy with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. His ROTC instructor for navigation and air tactics provided the inspiration for this first novel which took him ten years to research and seven years to write.
In Flanders Field McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian ArmyIN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.
It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:
"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."
When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:
"The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.
I thought that WAS that you calling in ??!!
I did have a couple of questions regarding some of the experiences of the airmen but the gentleman had left when I got through.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
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