Airman helped plan PoW breakout immortalised in classic film

Elizabeth Stewart and agencies
Guardian
August 06 2008

Tributes have been paid to a war hero whose tunnel-digging exploits were immortalised in The Great Escape - but who wasn't a fan of the classic film.

Eric "Digger" Dowling was gunned down during nighttime operations over Hamburg in April 1942 and was imprisoned in a German PoW camp, becoming famous for his role in the breakout.

The second world war veteran, from Bristol, died in a nursing home one day short of his 93rd birthday last month.

After his capture by the Germans, Dowling was taken for interrogation and sent to Stalag Luft III, a camp 100 miles south-east of Berlin specifically for airmen. It was there that Dowling carved out tunnels, forged documents and prepared maps for the real-life escape that inspired the 1963 movie.

His son revealed that the father-of-two "wasn't a fan" of the Steve McQueen epic and thought the famous but entirely fictitious motorbike scene was "well over the top".

( >>Continued )

By Margaret Neighbour
Scotsman
07 August 2008

SCIENTISTS are launching a study into whether the "trash vortex", a plastic soup of waste floating in the Pacific, could harbour new forms of marine life.

Environmentalists have campaigned for action to clean up the vast expanse of debris thought to cover an area twice the size of the continental United States since it was discovered in 1997.

According to the United Nations, the rubbish kills more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals.

Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food, as well as on Hawaiian beaches.

The rubbish vortex is held in place by swirling underwater currents. It drifts about 500 miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. ( >>Read on )

The gorillas, among the world's most romantic and secretive creatures, remain critically endangered, but the WCS survey suggests that attempts to protect them from threats, including poaching, deforestation and the ebola virus, are starting to pay off.

>>Read on

At the grand old age of 111, Henry is about to become a father with his partner of 38 years, Mildred. The reptilian couple - of a indigenous New Zealand species regarded as one of the last living descendants of the dinosaurs - can expect to meet their offspring when they hatch in about six months' time.



>>Read on

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This site has some interesting things on it.



From gallagher.com

Yes, but it's a filing cabinet skyscraper! Go look! And then, here are more cool real skyscrapers of the world. :)