February 2014: a month of discoveries with spotlight on Wikipedia's Daily featured Article on John F. Bolt Flying Ace

February  2014.

 What a fabulous month of discoveries for me.

The major story has been the ascendancy of President Vladimir Putin to near Godlike status as master politician especially  in an around the Crimea and  Ukraine and, secondly, his major grand opus,  the $52 Billion over- the- top investment in the Sochi Winter Olympics

Coming Soon : More on this late- breaking and continuing saga of Mr. Putin's global aspirations and his containment by the west.

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

from Wikipedia

Another  major discovery has been an  amazing posting by Wikipedia on its daily featured article page for February 26, 2014.

John Bolt in the cockpit of his F-86 Sabre in July, 1953

Courtesy of Wikipedia

The featured article which suddenly appeared on my laptop  (perhaps emailed  to me) was on John F. Bolt (1921-2004), a US military pilot who was the only US Marine to achieve ace status in two wars  (World War II and the Korean War)  and was also the only Marine jet fighter ace.  A flying ace is a pilot who is credited with shooting down a number of enemy craft during aerial combat and this number has varied.

In the case of Bolt,  he is is credited with six victories in the Pacific Theater of Operations, during  World War II.  In the Korean War in 1953, he flew  F-86 Sabres into "MIG Alley" an area along the northern border of North Korea. Here, he scored another  six victories.

What fascinates me is how Wiki knew about my interest in aviation, or put another way, how did we connect via  John Bolt!?!

I have posted dozens of blogs on aviation including many articles on earning my wings and aviating my own plane and it is possible that Wiki mined my blog for information.

On the day I took title to Piper Cherokee 1029H 

 Oroville Airport, Oroville, California

Secondly, six days earlier, I had just blogged about ice-skater Victor Ahn who took the gold medal for Russia in the short track. Indeed, he was the first athlete to win two gold medals representing two different countries. This double feat is indeed reminiscent of  Bolt's status as double ace.

A third possible reason for Wiki's reaching out to me is that I make frequent donations to this wonderful resource.

There are currently 4,463,066 articles in the English Wikipedia. Yes, I repeat over 4 million articles on every conceivable subject. 

To place me in the company of John Bolt is a mismatch. My low- time flying experience as a civilian pilot with less than 500 hours cannot compare to this ace who has accumulated hundreds of hours of training and actual combat experience.

 I was born too late to realize my persistent dream of defending my country as a World War II naval combat pilot.

All of the above leads to a fourth reason for wiki's friendly visit. Perhaps they had discovered my blog on Aerobatics over Portland, Oregon, which followed, tucked away as it were, an article I posted thanking my many flight instructors over the past 30 years. (click to read).

Well, Wiki did find me and I believe we are all the richer in knowledge......

To find this month's  queue (lineup of featured personages day by day),  click here and then click on this Month's Queue on the right side of the page under Featured Article Tools.

I hope you have as much fun navigating and then discovering the many, many other resources of  this website.

Kudos to Wikipedia!

Keep on flying Wikipedia

and may your online encyclopedia

(and daily featured article)

encircle our humble globe

with treasured info for us to probe!