Amazing but True: Record Seekers Will Probably Die.

As I was re-painting and chipping the mold off of my grandparent's basement walls today I was listening to the History channel in the other room. It must have been a marathon because I listened to and caught snippets of four straight hours of the show "Amazing but True" all of which featured famous record setting aviators and seafarers. As I scraped away on the walls I listened to story after story of famous pilots and boatmongers who all mysteriously disappeared during their attempts to set a record. Each “Strange but True” story came and went and about three stories in I finally realized, um, this guy is going to die I bet. And I was right. The first story was about Amelia Earheart who, I never realized, disappeared in the west Pacific. As with every one of the episodes, various explanations were given for the different disappearances, which seemed to be the same for all the people. "Some say that (INSERT FAMOUS PILOT’S NAME) disappeared because she/he was on a spy mission for Franklin Roosevelt." Sure.
One of the stories was about Charles Lindberg, I think. They only referred to him as Charles and I wasn't paying too much attention, but I guess he mysteriously vanished too. I did not know that. I don't remember having seen any giant murals or statues regarding a disappearance when I visited his boring museum in Minnesota.
Anyway, I don’t know what the ratio is, deaths to survivals in record setting attempts, but what I got from watching the History Channel was, is that if you attempt to set too many world speed, land or time records, you’ll probably die. But I’m sure you already knew that.
And the most entertaining story of the day was about some guy from England in the 1960’s who wanted to get some publicity for his failing electronics business so he entered into a “sail around the globe” contest. Disregarding all warnings from his family and experienced local seamen, he set sail on his voyage anyway. After figuring out he no idea what he was doing he decided to falsify his coordinates when reporting over the radio, in other words, cheat. So basically he just sat in his ship off the coast of Brazil, drank and pretended like he was sailing around the world, until he finally lied himself around the world.
The best part of this guy’s story was when, during Christmas, he recorded himself while drunk and the History Channel narrator is like “it was evident that during the weeks at sea the isolation was beginning to have an effect.” Yeah, wait no, he was just a drunkard who realized he was worst sailor in history.
I didn’t get to see how the story ended however. I didn’t get back after the commercial break, all I heard was “his family waited in anticipation for his arrival, but” then the dramatic music starts playing, which made me know he wasn’t going to make it. And hopefully he didn’t, because the guy seemed like a real nut.