[quote=@Vilageidiotx] And here I thought we'd pass the month mark. I was thinking about the Somali pilot and, when you consider how relatively backward East Africa was at the time, I think he was probably more significant than the Chinese pilot realized. Ethiopia probably had, at least in the great war, so few local pilots that should have been able to count them on one hand. I've used the concept of Iyasu bulldozing the traditional government and modernizing as a consequence to lampshade the fact that I created the basic outline of Ethiopia when I knew next to nothing about African history, but the Ethiopia and Somalia that went into the Great War would have very much been the feudal-tribal world of Menelik and the Mad Mullah. So this old man, a guy who would have grew up when the sword-wielding, castle-holding Dervishes were in power in his homeland, managed to become one of the first people in Africa to fly a plane into combat, and gained enough prestige to live comfortably and see family members enter the tiny Imperial bureaucracy. But the Chinese pilot who meets him and hears his story doesn't fully appreciate what he it witnessing, since he grew up in a world so far apart from Somalia and Africa that all he sees is an old soldier living a humble looking life in a poor country. Helluva thing. [/quote] If it's any funner on the way back to sanity I was going to write an interim-snippit where it's sorta explained to him how big a thing it was. Not only he met a rare thing but also because he got him to talk about something he didn't talk about ever. But then not go into great detail so I don't step on toes too hard, unless you and I want to go back and forth over some basic details for that snippit. [quote=@Vilageidiotx] [img]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3050464/thumbs/o-HERO-COP-1-570.jpg?7[/img] Checks out. [/quote] Guess I gotta fix that. Lol.