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Today's link of awesome: Henry Allingham
While dying of boredom today, started reading entries on the Battlestar Wiki, ended up at the entry of a most fascinating individual: Henry Allingham.
I don't necessarily find him interesting merely because he's 112 years old, because he's one of the 20 oldest people in the world, because he's the oldest man in Britain, the oldest surviving World War I veteran or even his huge family ("Henry now has six grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 13 great-great-grandchildren and one great-great-great-grandchild, all but one of whom live in the United States").
No, actually, it's a combination of two things -- his status as the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, generally regarded as the largest naval battle in history, but also because of his impressive utility during the early days of World War II:
During the Second World War, Allingham was in a reserved occupation and worked on a number of different projects. The most significant of these was perhaps the effort to provide an effective counter-measure to the German magnetic mines. During his Christmas lunch in 1939 he was called away to help come up with a system that would neutralise the mines and open the port of Harwich. Nine days later, he had successfully completed the task.
It must be nice to wake up in the morning at the age of 112 and realize that you're a badass.
I don't necessarily find him interesting merely because he's 112 years old, because he's one of the 20 oldest people in the world, because he's the oldest man in Britain, the oldest surviving World War I veteran or even his huge family ("Henry now has six grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 13 great-great-grandchildren and one great-great-great-grandchild, all but one of whom live in the United States").
No, actually, it's a combination of two things -- his status as the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, generally regarded as the largest naval battle in history, but also because of his impressive utility during the early days of World War II:
During the Second World War, Allingham was in a reserved occupation and worked on a number of different projects. The most significant of these was perhaps the effort to provide an effective counter-measure to the German magnetic mines. During his Christmas lunch in 1939 he was called away to help come up with a system that would neutralise the mines and open the port of Harwich. Nine days later, he had successfully completed the task.
It must be nice to wake up in the morning at the age of 112 and realize that you're a badass.