Entertainment

When I wrote about the glamour years at Pan Am (the airline) recently someone pointed me to the great old planes you can see at Motat, Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology.

Out of America's TV factory comes the latest hot show, Pan Am, inspired by that long-ago time in aviation when flying was glamorous and people dressed up to get on a plane.

Auckland was a humming town in 1880s. Your ancestors flirted and laughed and gossiped when they weren't being outraged and appalled. Some things were just too "utterly utter", as they used to say back then.

It all began, reportedly, during the American Civil War, Union Captain Robert Ellicombe, with his men were camped near Harrison's Landing in Virginia, with the Confederate Army on the other side of the narrow strip of land.

Latish in life, I've come to realise I love birds. For most of my life I've regarded birds as secondary to other real animal life and I've thought that bird-watchers were, frankly, bird-brains.

Albery Durer's master piece - HANDS, known the world over as The Praying Hands.

Some brilliant and interesting fun facts from Marie Higgs

Imagine the excitement in Auckland 126 years ago as Woodyear's Electric Circus unloaded piles of crates onto the wharf downtown and got ready to stage its latest spectacular.

The Press newspaper recently told the previously untold story of one of the great unsung heroes from that day - Rob Mackle.

The AA Magazine arrived the other day. No, not that AA, although if it had been, it might have been somewhat less depressing that the one I got, which sported a cover line promoting a story headlined 'Dangers for Older Drivers'.