At the turn of the 20th Century Marconi perfected his radio transmission system and it had the potential to overwhelm the cable line that had been laid across the Atlantic many years before. Although he had managed to transmit directly across the Atlantic it wasn't as yet practical and so he set up a station at Cape Race - the nearest to Europe - and another one at Valentia in Ireland - the nearest to North America.
He then put his operators on board ships, paid for at his own expense. His argument was that they would receive and transmit important navigation information between ships to make the oceans a safer place and it is a fact that losses and deaths in the important shipping lanes declined significantly. The sinking of the Titanic stunned the world however and at the subsequent public enquiry Marconi gave his evidence that seemed to confirm the instructions that had been issued.
But as the enquiry unfolded, it became clear that Marconi had been ... errrr... economical with the truth. What was really happening was that Marconi was using the ships to bounce messages across the Atlantic by radio. And when the Titanic came into the range of the radio station at Cape Race the radio operator started to transmit a battery of Marconi's commercial messages that lasted for three hours.
During this period, the Californian had become embedded in the ice and as the radio operator of the Californian knew that the Titanic was on the same track as his ship but an hour or so behind, he tried to send an urgent message to the Titanic to give it a warning. It was then that the operator on the Titanic cut him off with his curt message, and the ice warning never made it to the Titanic's captain.
At the subsequent public enquiry the Chairman asked the radio operator of the Californian "I'm sure you didn't mean to listen but could you say what character of messages the Titanic was transmitting?"
The operator replied "I'm sure that these messages were of a private nature".
If you ask most Americans who was the first to fly the Atlantic they would reply "Charles Lindbergh". But in fact much to their surprise and to the surprise of many others, at least 91 people (maybe 92 if a mysterious stowaway is included, and maybe even 94 if the mysterious fate of a pair of Portuguese aviators is ever unravelled. They disappeared on a flight across the South Atlantic and were never found, but a raft made from parts of their aircraft was discovered washed up on a remote part of the coast of Brazil) crossed the Atlantic before the Flying Fool.
Most British people would reply "Alcock and Brown" - but to the surprise of many people, that's not correct either.
What Alcock and Brown actually achieved was the first NON-STOP flight across the Atlantic. There was an earlier trans-Atlantic flight by a US Navy Pilot by the name of Albert Read. However his flight was a little different. It was in a seaplane along a route marked by a line of US Navy ships, he made several stops on the way, had a break in the Azores before starting again for Lisbon, and the two other seaplanes that accompanied him failed to make the journey. Nevertheless it is the first trans-Atlantic crossing no matter by what standards you measure his flight, and it has never ever received the credit that it deserves.
And of course he set off from Trepassey Bay in Newfoundland.
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