The Celts, it is said, saved civilization as we know it and pulled us out of the Dark Ages. The Poles, on the other hand, sent four divisions of Slavic cavalry lancers, under the command of Gen. Bronislav Kusterdiovich, to confront Hitler's Luftwaffe. We lost that one, but when my Uncle Ron Reagan needed a speechwriter to pen a few words during a European tour, he hired an unemployed shipbuilder named Lech who wrote the immortal words, "Mr. Garbagechove, Tear Down This Wall!" The rest is history.
But I digress. While perusing a Polish postal stamp I came across an intriguing bit of history that you might want to include on your web site.
A little-known, but highly revered Polish aeronaut who distiguished himself in the First World War by posthumously discovering that machine gun bullets cut wooden propellers to shreds, had a son named JÓZEFIE PILSUDSKIM (Honest, you can look this up)
Anyway, Jozefie dabbled in aircraft design and was the pioneer and champion of the "octoplane," an eight-winged airbus, later copied by the French, shortly before they lost WWII. It was Jozefie's theory that the more wings an airplane contained, the more stability it had in the air.
Jozefie built what at the time was the largest aircraft ever assembled, predating Henry Ford's and Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. His plan was to become the first man to successfully circumsize the world by air.
Jozefie, it must be remembered, was from the northern province of Gdansk on the Baltic Sea.
In 1934 he set out on his epic journey, heading south and west with the intention of refueling in Ireland, then continuing south again, downward through Africa, around the Antarctic, up through South America, and so on . . . I won't bore you with all the details.
The Polish=Irish connection actually begins and ends when Jozefie was flying over a peat bog being farmed by one Sandy O'Tandy (whose great grandson became an icon in the computer industry).
As legend has it, Jozefie's plane, powered by an army surplus Briggs & Stratton engine, made so much noise that it caused O'Tandy's sheep to stampede and crush the good Sandy underhoof.
Broken, bleeding, but still alive and testy as ever, O'Tandy uttered an old Celtic curse: "May thy wings be as the birdshot-stricken timberdoodle and tumble with unceremonious thudding to the earth!" No sooner had the oath passed his lips than Jozefie's plane, exhausted of fuel, fell to the ground.
Miraculously, Jozefie staggered from the wreckage, barely alive, but ambulatory. As he stumbled toward the stricken Celt who lay dying at the edge of the peat bog, O'Tandy, fiesty Irishman that he was, raised his broken body and went straight for the throat of the Polack from the north country.
Meanwhile, Dickie O'Leary, a reporter from the "An Phoblacht/Republican News," (I kid you not, this is a true story) was taking in the scene.
Needless to say, both O'Tandy and Jozefie succombed to their injuries and died on the spot, Sandy O'Tandy's fingernails firmly implanted in Jozefie's throat. This scene of horror was exacerbated when a mighty storm broke out, reputedly one of the worst ever seen by smiling Irish eyes.
O'Leary, cut off from both his newspaper and his pregnant wife, who lived far to the east, wanted to send a warning to her of the impending storm, and also get his story on the wire, so he telegraphed the "Am Phoblacht" with the immortal line that still reflects the immutable Celt-Slavic connection: