In 1913 Russia was the world's fastest growing economy, and still,
it was no paradise, remaining a traditionally agrarian country with a culture
all its own...
In August, the legendary Russian pilot Pyotr Nesterov became
the first airman in the whole world to loop the loop. The following year
he also became the first to ram an enemy plane during a dogfight, but,
unfortunately, the collision killed him... The advent of aerobatics was
also the birthday of the legendary pilot Alexander Pokryshkin who had to
his credit 59 enemy planes shot down during World War II. Three times Hero
of the Soviet Union, Pokryshkin was Sowing panic among the aces of Hitler's
much-touted Luftwaffe...
Also in 1913 the British built the world's first aircraft carrier
Hermes which served as a floating naval base for operations far away from
home. In the United States, Henry Ford unveiled his revolutionary practice
of assembly line production of cars and trucks. Three outstanding politicians
and national leaders in the Seventies were also born in 1913. These were
German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and
Cypriot President, Archbishop Macarios. The year 1913 saw the birth of
the outstanding French author and thinker Albert Camus whose books delved
deeply into the eternal question of the true meaning of the human life.
His 1947 classic, The Plague, is an allegory of the Resistance raising
the problems of responsibility and commitment for the believer and the
unbeliever. In 1957 Albert Camus, then 44 year old, won the Nobel Prize
for literature.
Meanwhile, the popular American actor Burt Lancaster was born
in the United States. Starting off as an acrobat, Lancaster shot to stardom
on the strength of his first movie, The Killer.
The great Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore also won his Nobel
prize for literature in 1913.
And we end this program with a story about the great German engineer
Rudolf Diesel whose name has since become the synonym of the oil-fuel engine
he patented in 1892. It's very hard to imagine the modern transport without
this powerful and economical engine. His tragic drowning in the English
Channel on September 29th, 1913, is still a mystery waiting to be solved...
On that fateful day, the 55 year-old Dr.Rudolf Diesel was on board when
the luxurious steamboat Dresden sailed from Antwerp heading for Britain.
Rudolf Diesel had been invited to London as a guest of honor by a British
corporation which was building his engines.
Dr.Diesel stayed up late into the night chatting with the news
people. As usual, he was in very good spirits and and joking all the time...
After midnight the passengers all retired to their cabins. In the morning,
a steward knocked on Dr.Diesel's door to invite him to breakfast only to
find out the cabin was empty. They started looking for the missing engineer
but he seemed to have vanished without trace! The accident triggered a
public outcry which culminated in early October when some German fishermen
found floating in the sea the dead body of a well-dressed gentleman. Before
they could pick him up on board, however, a heavy storm began and they
only managed to take a couple of rings off the dead man's fingers. When
the honest fishermen handed the rings over to the police it became clear
that the drowned man was indeed the missing Dr.Rudolf Diesel! Suicide was
immediately brushed off by the investigators because Dr.Diesel's behavior
and his good mood simply ruled out such a possibility. The version of a
robbery didn't hold water either because the victim did not have any expensive
things on him and even his suitcase in the cabin had been left untouched.
The most viable suggestion was that the talented inventor might have fallen
victim to a contract murder. The killer could have been hired by the coal
industrialists, financially crumpled by the advent of Rudolf Diesel's economical
engine. The murder could also have been the revenge of the German generals,
still rattled by Dr.Diesel's refusal to take part in the development of
the country's top-secret weapon, the flame-thrower.
More than 85 years after that tragic rainy night in September,
the untimely death of Dr.Rudolf Diesel is still a mystery...
THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is
prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.
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