A Pilot, A Navigator 

and a Humorist ...



On this day in nineteen hundred and thirty-one

Two men set off in a plane with a single engine

Intending to travel all the way around the world

A feat they accomplished just after a week unfurled



One was an American aviator named Wiley Post

(Who later did the same trip solo ... quite a toast)

The other was an Australian-American aviator ...

Harold Charles Gatty acted as Post's navigator



The trip they went on together was a little shorter

Than Post's solo repeat - undertaken two years later

When he shaved off just about a day from the overall

Even tho' he added over one hundred miles to it all 



And then Post took off again just two short years later

With the humorist, Will Rogers - a rather keen aviator

But this time spelled the end for Wiley Post's life of adventure

For the plane went down, killing both, near Point Barrow, Alaska ...



- Tristram



© Christopher W. Thomas

12:05pm Wed. June 23rd, 1999



first around-the-world trip -

15,474 miles in 8 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes



second around-the-world trip (solo) -

15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes



the last adventure (with Will Rogers) -

August 15th, 1935 (Post was just 36)



Will Rogers was born in Oologah, OK in 1879.

He made his vaudeville debut in NYC in 1905,

followed by appearances with Ziegfield Follies

after 1914. After the First World War ended in

1918, he went to Hollywood and made 60 films.



Most notable of these are the following:

A Connecticut Yankee - 1931

Down to Earth - 1932

State Fair - 1933

Doctor Bull - 1933 (John Ford directed)

David Harum - 1934

Judge Priest - 1934 (John Ford directed)

Life Begins at 40 - 1935

Steamboat 'Round the Bend - 1935

(John Ford directed ... released posthumously)



Books by Will Rogers include:



The Cowboy Philosopher on Prohibition - 1919

Illiterate Digest - 1924

Will Rogers' Political Follies