Page 28 - Microsoft Word - miniz-digest-123-125.docx

Reach for the sky – Pt.3

I have a real mixture of bottles to show you in this
article, anything to do with flying that has made it
into miniature bottles.

We start with ‘The Flying Man’ from Lufthansa. I
believe that this is from an old German legend.

The next pictures all feature balloons, the second real flying machines.
Second? Yes, second as the Chinese lifted men up on kites centuries
before. This was usually to spy on enemy formations prior to battle. These existed from at
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least the 6 century but, as far as I know, there are no minis depicting these. The mortality
rate was VERY high! The idea was ‘reinvented’ in Europe in the very late 1800’s/early
1900’s. Kite surfing is popular today in some places but the mortality rate is still high in
comparison to other sports. Ballooning really caught on for a few decades, there even being
trans-Atlantic flights using rigid hydrogen filled craft. Hot air ballooning (all the balloons
shown here) is now popular again for tourists. And large rigid or semi rigid helium balloons
are in process of being commercialised again.

The six cans are the Historic Balloons series from Alpa and are one of the harder can sets to
obtain. All Alpa cans contain water. El Globo is a great Tequila mini that we showed you a
few issues back. The Aviemore Balloon Festival bottle was made by Cairngorm Whisky
Centre in 1995 and, of course, contains Scotch.

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We start the next page with two Rutherford Scotch jugs marking the 100 anniversary of the
Wright Brothers’ first flight. Probably not THE first flight as there are at least two other

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