In my book Flight to the Top of the World: The Adventures of Walter Wellman I show that the race to the North Pole and the birth of aviation overlapped with the growth of modern media culture: instant news, novelty, sensationalism, and superficial celebrity. But at the very peak of his celebrity in 1910, he was suddenly upstaged by a cat.įame is a strange thing, and it’s grown even stranger in the era of mass media and instant communication. Walter Wellman was a famous journalist, polar explorer, and airship captain in the early twentieth century. David Bristow is an associate director at the Nebraska State Historical Society, where he serves as the journal editor of Nebraska History and book editor for the society’s scholarly and popular books. He is the author of Sky Sailors: True Stories of the Balloon Era and A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of Nineteenth Century Omaha.
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