La chica que cayó del cielo

La chica que cayó del cielo

Era la Nochebuena de 1971, y la cabaña olía a pino y lana húmeda. Entre los regalos envueltos y los pasteles navideños que descansaban sobre los regazos, una joven de diecisiete años con un minivestido sin mangas estaba sentada junto a su madre, observando cómo una pared de nubes negras engullía el cielo...
El primer hombre salvado por un paracaídas

El primer hombre salvado por un paracaídas

The sky over Dayton was the washed-out blue of a late October afternoon when Lieutenant Harold R. Harris felt his control stick begin to hammer in his hand. He was a mile and a half above the rooftops, throwing his stubby Loening monoplane through a mock dogfight,...
The Man Who Jumped From the Edge of Space

The Man Who Jumped From the Edge of Space

On 16 August 1960, a tiny open gondola hung beneath an enormous helium balloon, 102,800 feet above the New Mexico desert. That is more than 31 kilometres up — high enough that the sky overhead is black, the horizon curves, and there is almost no air left to breathe....
The Plane That Killed Both Its Test Pilots

The Plane That Killed Both Its Test Pilots

There are bad aircraft, and then there is the Christmas Bullet — a machine so misconceived that it holds a record no other aeroplane will ever want: it killed a test pilot on its first flight, and then killed a second test pilot on the first flight of the second...