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THE WANDERLING'S FIRST FLIGHT USED A LILIENTHAL DESIGN, ENDING WITH THE SAME RESULTS AS DA VINCI'S
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The painting of The Last Supper by the famed and venerated Renaissance artist, scientist, and polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci, depicts the exact moment Christ tells his apostles, "One of you will betray me." The apostles react, caught in that moment, each according to his own personality. Referring back to the Gospels, Leonardo depicts Philip asking, "Lord, is it I?" Christ replies, "He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me (Matthew 26: 21-22). Christ and Judas are shown simultaneously reaching toward a plate that lies between them, even as Judas defensively backs away. In his other hand, Judas clutches the bag containing the 30 pieces of silver.[1]
LEONARDO DA VINCI: 500 YEARS TOO SOON, TRUE COMICS, MARCH 1947, ISSUE # 58
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As many of you may have discovered by now some of the above pages from the illustrated story "Da Vinci 500 Years To Soon," which has been presented here from TRUE COMICS, No. 58, March 1947, are what I call interactive in that you can go to certain small selected areas on various places within the pages and click through to additional information. If you have already done so please continue, if not, you might consider going back and select some of the offerings.
On the third page of ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT: The Path Unfolds, relating living with my artist uncle some years following the death of my mother, I write that it was under his auspices somewhere approaching or near age ten that I first heard of Leonardo Da Vinci. Actually, more clearly what happened was, after reading the Da Vinci story above as found in True Comics, No. 58, March 1947 titled 500 Years Too Soon, because of a sudden growing interest in Da Vinci, my Uncle began showing me pictures of Leonardo's flying machines in earnest. So saying, I recognized them from my past as a preschool four or five-year old, I just didn't know (or remember) who Leonardo was specifically or how the drawings related to either him or me.
In Codex Atlanticus, that relates to Leonardo Da Vinci's notes on the flight of birds, I write that my older brother who was born three years before me, and because of being older, started school several years before I did. As he went from kindergarten through to the third grade my mother helped him with his reading. Even though I hadn't started school because of being too young, vying to garner as much if not more attention than he seemed to be receiving, I learned to read right along with him. By the time he reached third grade and I started kindergarten, I was reading third grade books probably as well or better than he was and was being shown off by my mother for being able to do so to anybody who would listen.
Two books I remember fondly right up to this day, both hardcover, that my mother and brother read over and over or I chose to read myself was one about Hoover Dam showing how it was constructed, it's inner workings with row after row of power generators and one with pages of black and white line drawings of Da Vinci's flying machines. Why either of those two books or the contents therein would standout so much in my memory relative to any other books we may have read is not known.
To my knowledge I have never seen a copy of the Leonardo Da Vinci book with the black and white line drawings of his flying machines that so impressed me as the young boy that I was reading with my mother and older brother, at least not so that it jogged my memory, and I have searched book after book for years hoping for just that experience. However, such is not the case regarding a comic book I somehow must have read, saw, or came into contact with when I was a very young boy.That comic book was WAR HEROES, No. 4, April-June 1943 which carried within it's contents the following related to Da Vinci:
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WAR HEROES, DELL PUBLISHING CO., NO. 4, APRIL-JUNE, 1943
Although at the time I may not have related the above to Leonardo Da Vinci I did relate it back to something else. One day, several years before, having not yet even reached school age, I was in the junk laden backyard workshop garage of the grandfather of the girl next door who used to babysit me like I often was. While there, I came across the following picture, below, in a publication of some kind the old man had been making a fuss over with a neighbor. The grandfather was big on Japanese invasion stuff, even to the point of monitoring shortwave radio all night long to having his own hand-cranked air raid siren. My dad was the air raid warden for our block while right along with him I was, albeit self ordained, a Junior Air Raid Warden, and even though I never quite got it, my dad and the old man didn't always see eye-to-eye regarding his constant false air raid warnings. In any case, I remember well the fuss between the neighbor and the grandfather involving the photograph. It was all about potential invasion, with the grandfather being adamant that "we should go to no ends to protect against invasion" and the neighbor not being in full agreement, even to the point of reaching a huge yelling match and the neighbor being thrown out of the shop because of being in league with the enemy.
Hearing all the commotion my mother or grandmother came over and took me home and when I left, without realizing it, I still had the publication that had the photograph in it. At home all I did was look at it. Over and over I continued to look at the photo and all I could think about was a man with some kind of wing device designed to help make him fly.
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It was primarily because of the above that from a very young age I started to jump off one-story porches, garages, and roof tops with a bed sheet made into a parachute or flaring behind my back tied to my wrists and ankles a la the glider chute of Captain Midnight on more than one occasion, So too, without any knowledge of same thereof or parental approval either, I designed and built bat-like wings with cloth and sticks and attempted to fly, all before my uncle, who helped me in later years, showed up on the scene.
photo source David Heger
Within a few days of having read 500 Years Too Soon for the first time and approximately four or five years after the above event, one way or the other, I saw the 1947 Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie titled Tarzan and the Huntress. No sooner had I seen it than my interest in Da Vinci flying machines exploded after watching the scene where Tarzan's son Boy builds a glider-type plane capable of flying and their chimp Cheetah, apparently gauging the glider's potential, steals it. Hanging on for dear life Cheetah jumps off some rocks and covers quite some distance before crashing into the trees.
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Haranguing my uncle over and over on the idea of flying in the same manner, he eventually laid out a life size drawing of a Da Vinci like craft on the floor of the studio and from there, together, we built an actual machine capable of flying while carrying a person, hopefully me, in flight.
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On September 18, 1951, the year before I started high school, the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still was released. Four years later, unrelated, and by then me being a senior, a discussion between myself and the person I call my Mentor came up about Leonardo Da Vinci and his flying machines and how as a kid a comic book induced me into both building and attempting to fly my own machine.
A flyer himself, having been a fighter pilot during World War I flying for the British against the Germans before the Americans entered the war, he found my attempts to build and fly my own flying machine intriguing, so much so he was willing to go with me to one of the major comic books stores to see if we could find a copy. Sure enough they had one and in much better shape than I remember mine being. Two highly interesting things happened that day, both of which triggered similar space related outcomes relative to me and my mentor. First, the store had a poster of The Day the Earth Stood Still on display that when discussing it, I made clear references to flying saucers. Secondly, when my mentor was going through the Da Vinci comic book he came across a few drawings of major buildings in Florence, one of which that had on exhibit a Renaissance painting done in the 1500's, around the same time as Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, that had a UFO in the background.
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TO EXPAND THE ORIGINAL VERSION CLICK CIRCULAR IMAGE ABOVE THEN CLICK SECOND TIME ENLARGEMENT BELOW OF THE ABOVE SHOWS THE SHEPHARD AND DOG LOOKING AT THE UFO THE ARTIST IN ME
OUTER SPACE TO THE RENAISSANCE UFOs
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THE BATMAN AND LEONARDO DA VINCI, BATMAN COMICS, APRIL-MAY 1948 ISSUE #46 --
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THE FLYING FRONTIERSMAN, TOMAHAWK COMICS, MARCH-APRIL 1951, ISSUE #4 -
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SO, DID THE WANDERLING FLY?
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GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE: INTERACTIVE
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SEE ALSO:
EARLY FLYERS: FROM ICARUS TO LILIENTHAL
LEONARDO DA VINCI: 500 YEARS TO SOON
THE FLYING MACHINE: AMERICA 1948 AD
THE DA VINCI GLIDER CIRCA 1500 AD
LILIENTHAL GLIDER TYPE IX
FLYING FRONTIERSMAN
THE BOOK OF LEAVES
WASHOE ZEPHYR
THE BLACK CONDOR: THE MAN WHO COULD FLY LIKE A BIRD
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FLYING MACHINE OF DIEGO MARIN AGUILERA, FLOWN IN 1793
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THE FLYING MACHINE: CHINA 400 A.D
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THE DAISY HANDBOOK AND LEONARDO DA VINCI
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FLYING CAPTAIN MARVEL
ZEN AND THE ART OF FLYING MEN
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
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LEONARDO
DA--VINCI
RING SITE
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As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
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Interestingly enough, the page below, with the account of Mickey Morgan, the Bat Man, appeared in the 1948 issue of the Daisy Handbook #2, reached by clicking the cover graphic somewhat down the page, that I tout so often as having a black and white version of the full color Da Vinci 500 Years Too Soon comic book article as seen previously on this page above, that was so instrumental in building and operating my own flying machine.
The comic book WAR HEROES, No. 4, April-June 1943 that had the original Mickey Morgan flying batman article was long since gone by the time my uncle came on the scene. However, when he saw the article that appeared in the 1948 Dasiy Handbook #2, as seen below, he was immediately reminded of a sculpture piece titled "Miss Expanding Universe" (1932) created by an artist friend of his named Isamu Noguchi, currently on display in Contemporary Art, Gallery 265, as shown below, in the Art Institute of Chicago:
2018 THE ISAMU NOGUCHI FOUNDATION AND GARDEN MUSEUM, NEW YORK
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THE GLIDER CHUTE:
In issue #1 of the Fawcett Publication version of Captain Midnight dated September 30, 1942 it reveals that Captain Albright, soldier and inventor, is actually Captain Midnight. In the second of several stories appearing in that first issue, titled "Secret Sub" Captain Midnight is shown using his glider chute for the first time, it's invention thereof credited back to Albright it is presumed.
Some two-years-plus prior to the Captain Midnight glider chute appearance, a character given the name of Black Condor appeared in Crack Comics dated May 1940. The storyline regarding the Black Condor in that first issue was an origin story, that is, where he came from, how he came to be, etc. Although in later issues the the Black Condor's glider chute as well as his costume morphs into dark blue or black, the origin story clearly shows it in red as illustrated in the graphic below from the last page of the 1940 story --- being in a sense an exact duplicate of Captain Midnight's glider chute, albeit predating the use of Albright's invention by some two years.
As to glider-chutes and who did what first we could go on and on, Captain Midnight this, Black Condor that. However, one way or the other, it is quite clear that as early as 1938, in the black and white serial Flash Gordon Trip to Mars Flash Gordon is seen using a batwing like glider-cape in several chapters. The first such instance is in Chapter 6 Tree Men of Mars followed later in chapters 11, 12, and 13.
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It's easy to see from the above sculpture by Isamu Noguchi, shown further back up the page as currently hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago, that Noguchi had been flirting with and around such concepts since at least 1932.
If you came to this page from Getting Letters and Emails and would like to read the complete article click HERE .
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SEEING THE MONA LISA IN REAL LIFE:
During the early part of the year 1963, after having been drafted in the latter part of 1962, I had moved from Basic Training at Fort Ord, California to being fully ensconced in training and the goings on of the Southeastern Signal Corps School in Fort Gordon, Georgia. However, even though I had only just earned my Private First Class stripes from the slick sleeve I was, because of my ability with Morse code, a near savant as my civilian instructors continued to tell my chain of command officers, before completion of Signal School I was sent on my second TDY military experience, the first having been while I was still a buck private in basic training at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
My TDY destination from Fort Gordon was the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I was sent to be part of a several week observed study control group working with initially ten, dropped to five, specially selected cadets supposedly versed in the intricacies of Morse code. The idea was to find out what I had that they didn't and once found could it be learned or replicated.
The father of one of the cadets in the group owned a yacht that one weekend he sailed up the Hudson River from some affluent suburb of New York City, hoping to spend some time with his son. The son invited several cadet friends and me to hang out with him on the boat, which, being a few notches better than nothing, I did. As what would eventually become usual for me nothing identified me as to my rank or status, so nobody really knew if I was an officer, an enlisted man, or maybe even a civilian. Often, for people who own yachts sometimes things like that matter. For example, the cadet's sister. If she had known I was a lowly private and not one of the group at large she probably wouldn't have even talked to me. Same with the dad. It came out between the father and I that we both knew David J. Halliburton Sr. and both had been on his yacht the Twin Dolphin, both several times. I told the father I knew Halliburton because as a young man he had a serious crush on my stepmother's niece, which is true. Halliburton's family lived right across the street from my stepmother and during the summer her niece would babysit me. In reality though I knew Halliburton later in life because I was a crew member on his yacht, a mere sander of wood. Of course I didn't tell the dad that and he automatically put me higher up on the scale of things. Years later Halliburton did so as well after the connection with my stepmother's niece became clear.
In any case, as it turned out, from February 4, 1963 to March 4, 1963, after having been on exhibit in Washington D.C., but before returning to the Louvre in Paris, and for the only time ever, Leonardo Da Vinci's painting the Mona Lisa was in the U.S. and on exhibit at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a period of time that overlapped the exact same time I was at West Point. More than that, it just so happened the father of the cadet had long time philanthropic ties in support the museum and had at his beckon call special VIP passes to see the exhibit. When we got to talking and he thought I was right up there with Halliburton in the scheme of things and I expressed an overwhelming desire to see the Mona Lisa, as soon as he could arrange it and his soon and his son and I could get time off he sent a car up to West Point to pick us. We were whisked into the museum ahead of the hours long crowds and as others were being ushered through after viewing the painting, our neck lanyard identification allowed to stay as long as we wanted.
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"Thousands of visitors waited in line for the doors to open when on February 7, 1963, the Mona Lisa went on view to the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More than one million New Yorkers went to see the painting during the month-long exhibition, enduring winter cold and rain, as 'Mona Mania' swept the nation."
MORSE CODE, HAND KEYS, AND DA VINCI
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THE PICTURE ON THE LEFT IS OF LEONARDO DA VINCI FROM THE FIRST PAGE
OF THE ILLUSTRATED STORY "500 YEARS TO SOON." PICTURE ON THE RIGHT
IS OF SAMUEL MORSE'S FIRST ATTEMPT FOR SENDING AND RECEIVING CODE
THE MONA LISA AS RENDERED IN MORSE'S PAINTING
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THE BOOK OF LEAVES
"The Cumaean Sibyl wrote her prophecies on leaves, which she then placed at the mouth of her cave. If no one came to collect them, they were scattered by winds and never read. Written in complex, often enigmatic verses, these 'Sibylline Leaves' were sometimes bound into books. It was said that the Sibyl herself brought nine volumes of these prophecies to Tarquin II of Rome, offering them to him at an outrageous price. He scoffed, and she immediately burned three volumes, offering the remaining six at the same high price. Again-rather less casually--he refused. Again she burned three volumes, again asking the original price. This time the king's curiosity was high, his resistance low, and he purchased the Sibylline prophecies."
The above quote, found at a link further down, is said to be accurate. However, how the Sibyl came to have those powers of prophecies is another thing, and rather than them just flowing naturally, they have become seeped in legend, so presented briefly as follows:
The Sibyl of Cumae is said to have been granted her powers from the sun god Apollo. Apollo offered her anything if she would spend a single night with him. She asked for as many years of life as grains of sand she could squeeze into her hand. Apollo gave her request, but she refused his advances. She was cursed with the fulfillment of her wish, eternal life without eternal youth.
She shriveled into a frail undying body, so small she could fit into a jar and hung from a tree. She needed no food or drink because she could neither starve nor die of thirst. And there she hung. Children were said to stand beneath her urn and asked what she wished, to which she would faintly reply, "I wish to die."
Thus then, taken form the above, in a sense, relegates her abilities into a need for a belief in Apollo, something few people in today's world have.
THE CUMAEAN SIBYL
FOOTNOTE [1]
LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE LAST SUPPER
LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE LAST SUPPER, TEMPERA AND OIL ON PLASTER. SANTA MARIA DELLA GRAZI, MILAN, ITALY (1498)
The subject matter inherent in Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper is Christ's final meal with his apostles before Judas betrays him to the authorities who in turn arrest Jesus, leading then to his crucifixion .
Leonardo's painting depicts the exact moment Christ tells his apostles, "One of you will betray me." The apostles react, caught in that moment, each according to his own personality. Referring back to the Gospels, Leonardo depicts Philip asking, "Lord, is it I?" Christ replies, "He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me (Matthew 26: 21-22). Christ and Judas are shown simultaneously reaching toward a plate that lies between them, even as Judas defensively backs away. In his other hand, Judas clutches the bag containing the 30 pieces of silver.
---OBATALA--PAPA-LEGBA--CHANGO--- OSHUN------JUST JUDGE
-----OGOUN--------OYA-----------YEMAYA
THE SEVEN AFRICAN POWERS
CENTRAL FIGURE: Just Judge, crucifixion of Jesus. Watched over by a rooster on a pedestal. Inside the circle the word "Olofi" sometimes appears. The rooster is thought to signify betrayal as in Mark 14:30: And Jesus said to him, "Truly I say to you, That this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you shall deny me three times."
SEVEN AFRICAN POWERS
OBEAH: AFRO-CARIBBEAN SHAMANISM
THE WORD OBEAH: WHAT DOES IT MEAN, HOW DOES IT WORK?
THE BATMAN AND LEONARDO DA VINCI, BATMAN COMICS, APRIL-MAY 1948 ISSUE #46 --
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DID LEONARDO DA VINCI FLY?
THE WANDERLING, BATMAN, AND DA VINCI
OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED REPLICA OF STATUE OF DAVID STANDING IN ORIGINAL LOCATION, LOWER LEFT
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At the 6 minutes and 31 second mark the glider-chute flying scene shows up:
