Flying a Kite

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time…. As we told you on our ’This Month’ page, Monday February 15th 2010 is ‘Clean Monday’, the first day of Lent, and the day when people go out to the countryside and try to fly kites. So our feature editor thought that an article about the history of this great tradition (and about Greek kites in general) would be appropriate for the current issue. However, researching this month’s spotlight feature turned out to be more challenging than some of you might have imagined. When we tried our normal avenues of seeking information (raiding Google and Wikipedia and asking our Greek friends) we drew a blank. According to Wikipedia ’kites were probably invented by the ancient Chinese’ (possibly not written in those exact words). Call us cynics if you like, but when Wikipedia says that anything was ‘probably’ invented by the ancient Chinese, we tend to get suspicious that the person writing the article is just winging it. And as for our Greek friends’ answers to the question “Why do you fly kites on Clean Monday?” well, the standard response ran along the lines of “Because it’s what we do”. But we remained undaunted in our mission (plus the editor was in a monumental panic about the deadline). So here is our piece about ’Things that fly that might have a faintly Greek / Cretan theme’. Somewhere along the way it all seemed to get a bit surreal, so apologies to our gentle readers in advance. In our March issue Kate will try to get her serious hat back on (An article about hats? Now, there’s a thought).

Space Cadets

It may come as no surprise to some of you - especially those of you who have ever had to deal with a tax office here (sorry about being rude when we are guests in this wonderful country, but the expressions ‘IKA’ and ‘reality’ don’t generally go together when you are trying to form a coherent sentence in the English language) that the word ‘astronaut’ comes from the Greek. It means ‘Star sailor’ which conjures up the romantic - well it does for she who was brought up in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ town (find me that rabbit hole). The word for astronaut in Russian is of course ‘cosmonaut’ which may or may not mean ‘world sailor’ and may or may not have been politically significant at one point in the twentieth century. Anyway, moving rapidly on….

Greeks have always been fascinated by the stars and many of our theories about the universe (maybe not all of them accurate, but who can really tell?) stem from the great philosophers. I was about to say that we get our names for the planets from Greek, too, but we don’t. Those Romans stole the words. Which is one of the reasons that women are said to come from Venus rather than from Aphrodite. On the other hand, once you know that the Greek for milk is γάλα then the concepts of ‘galaxy’ and ‘milky way’ make perfect sense. Hope you are all impressed with the level of restraint shown in not making any jokes whatsoever about Mars Bars.

Waxing Lyrical: Daedalus and Icarus

Forget Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Copernicus, Isaac Newton and the apples (hey, there had to be more than one apple, otherwise the theory of gravity would just have been an accident) or the Montgolfier brothers and Morris Motors - editor’s knowledge of the history of science might be a bit patchy here - when we come to myths about flight, Crete wins prizes. One of our best known local stories is of course the tale about a father and son trying to get away from Knossos in a hurry. According to one legend, Daedalus made wings out of feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus so that they could make their great escape. Icarus, being a rebellious child ignored his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun, the wax melted and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. Some say that this was near Ikaria, and is why the island got its name. However, according to another legend what really happened was that Daedalus and Icarus tried to escape by boat - Daedalus making the first ever set of sails - and that Icarus drowned when he fell overboard - Daedalus being a neglectful parent. We suggest that you choose the scenario that best fits in with your personal ‘family issue zeitgeist’. Whatever the case, here at the Bugle we never cease to be amazed at the number of travel agencies and companies that call themselves after the unfortunate Icarus, clearly under the misguided illusion that the name Icarus will inspire confidence. We once flew with Icarus airlines in Ecuador. Luckily it was only a 30 minute flight, so not long enough for the wings to melt. But even so…. And for those of you who are still having trouble telling the two apart, here is a little handy not-so-rough guideline: Daedalus = ‘did’. Icarus = ‘eek /splosh’.

The First Jet Engine — Making a Helicopter out of a Kettle?

We seem to have run out of space which seems strange given the infinite nature of the universe. But here’s a little gem which might entertain you. Hero of Alexandria in the first century AD made a proto jet engine using boiling water and a spinning ball (aka aeolipile). OK, so Hero may not have been the first one to make the thing but he was almost certainly the first person to describe it. Don’t ask me how it works. My best guess is to try and make a cup of tea and jiggle somebody’s balls. But this is probably why I will never, ever become a physics teacher. Why are we mentioning this? Well, firstly, if aeolipile ever comes up in a pub quiz, aren’t you going to be just so grateful that you read this? Secondly, isn’t this just a great example of how inventive the ancient Greeks were?