We are five days late but nevertheless would like to wish Commander William Donald Aelian “Bill” King a most happy 100th birthday. He is only living submarine commander from World War II. He initially served on the battleship, HMS Resolution, and later becoming commanding officer of HMS Snapper, an S class submarine and then of HMS Trusty and HMS Telemachus, both T class submarines. During the war, he was promoted to Commander and awarded seven medals.
Later, at age 58, King became the oldest competitor in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, the first round the world solo yacht race. Sailing a junk rigged schooner,the Galway Blazer II, he was dismasted in the South Atlantic. He succeeded in cirumnavigating single handed on his third attempt in 1973, despite a collsion with a whale or large shark which almost sank his boat.


Two species of Asian carp, the bighead and the silver, were imported in the US in the 1970s by catfish farmers to eat algae in ponds. In flood in the 1990s, Asian trout escaped in the Mississippi River basin have been multiplying wildly and heading north. A few days ago an 20 pound Asian bighead carp was caught by a fisherman in Illinois’s Lake Calumet, on the South Side of Chicago. That is north of the electric fences installed to stop the carp and only six miles from Lake Michigan.
In 1898, the 

An interested court case between a private salvor and the State of New York appears to have been settled in favor of the state. The salvor, Northeast Research, claimed the 19th century schooner, which it claims is the Caledonia.
It says something about our society that a missing prop from a classic movie, specifically Bruce, the mechanical shark from
Happy Solstice to All. One way that at least some New Yorkers mark the beginning of the summer is to observe or participate in the
A section of upper New York harbor, just north of Ellis Island, has been taken over for the 