Trivia Tuesday

 

Trivia Tuesday.  Yes, I know it's late in the day, and possibly Wednesday now for most of you reading this, but I posted this on Tuesday and "Wednesday Trivia" just doesn't have the same ring to it.  I could have just used "Trivia Time" again, but amazingly enough, today fell on a Tuesday so it just worked out that way.  I guess I could have also used "Two-fer Tuesday" as Sarge posted a nice one about his visit to see the final resting place of some of our country's bravest, but I digress.  

So what could this MiG-29 Fulcrum, and the emblem on the left have in common?

That's the symbol of the Portland Trailblazers, although the first time I saw it, it looked more like this:

When my father retired from the Navy in the mid-70's and we moved from San Diego to Oregon, the Portland Trailblazers were HOT!  They were led by a fellow San Diego transplant- Bill Walton. Bill had the entire state enthralled with his dominating play and his atypical style- looking more like a lumberjack than a SoCal kid and UCLA graduate.

Source:  NBA.com

The Blazers were the only pro team in Oregon at the time so they were definitely the team to root for, winning the NBA Championship in the 1976/77 season. They still are the only pro team unless you count the Oregon Ducks, who are well funded by Alumnus Phil Knight, thanks to the success of Nike.  Actually, there is another pro team there - if you count soccer - the Portland Timbers, who play in the MLS or Major League Soccer.

And that gives me a segue to another hint.

If the commonality between the Blazers and that MiG-29 eludes you, how about these two?

Supermarine Spitfire

The Seattle Sounders and a Supermarine Spitfire provide us with some additional advantageous alliteration, but they too have something in common, and it's the same thing the first two have.  By the way, the Sounders and Timbers are very close rivals in the Pacific Northwest, but most of the country couldn't care less.  Did you even know those two teams exist?  It is just soccer.  Anyway, have you guessed/figured it out/cheated googled it yet?

Still nothing?

Well, I won't keep you in much more suspense.  How about this last hint:

BF-109 Messerschmitt 

Now the Seahawks are the other team people in Oregon root for, although the Niners and Raiders have a following.  They got the local press and even though they were in the AFC West with my beloved Chargers, I tended to root for them when Jim Zorn wasn't going head-to-head with Dan Fouts.  They've since moved to the NFC, but I've moved from the PACNORWEST so I've lost interest in them.

Anyway, the Messerschmitt and Seahawks aren't quite as alliterative as the others, but I could have used Seahawks and Hawker Hurricane for the same purpose.

Now I've been having a little fun with all you dedicated and patient readers, but what I've been holding back is that the three teams I mentioned, (not counting the Timbers), and all the aircraft, are owned by the same person- Paul Allen.  Who is Paul Allen? Just some guy with a few bucks in his pocket:

Paul Gardner Allen (born 21 January 1953) is an American philanthropist,investor and innovator, best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation alongside Bill Gates. As of December 2014, he was estimated to be the 55th richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $17.1 billion.^[1]  (Wikipedia)

 Here's his whole collection:

Britain
• Hawker Hurricane Mk.XIIA
• Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vc
Germany
• Fieseler Fi 156 C-2 Storch
• Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-5
• Focke-Wulf Fw 190 D-13 (Dora)
• Messerschmitt 163 B Komet
• Messerschmitt Bf 109 E-3 (Emil)
Japan
• Mitsubishi A6M3-22 Reisen (Zero)
• Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Oscar)






Russia
• Ilyushin II-2M3 Shturmovik
• Mikoyan MiG-29UB Fulcrum
• Polikarpov I-16 Type 24 (Rata)
• Polikarpov U-2/Po-2
United States
• Curtiss JN-4D Jenny
• Curtiss P-40C Tomahawk
• Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat
• North American B-25J Mitchell
• North American P-51D Mustang
• Republic P-47D Thunderbolt
• Scaled Composites Model 318 White Knight
Artifacts
• Avro Lancaster B. Mk.I nose section
• Fieseler Fi 103 V-1
• Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg
• Flak 37 88mm Gun
• Jagdpanzer 38(t) (Hetzer)
• KMDB (Main Design Bureau) T-34/85
• M4A1 Sherman Medium Tank
• Mittelwerk GmbH V-2 Rocket
• Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne
• M55 8-inch Self-Propelled Howitzer
• (SS-1b Scud-A) Ballistic Missile System
• M1A1 Abrams Turret Trainer

Pretty impressive if you ask me.  There are plenty of museums that have historical US aircraft, but I don't think there are too many that feature so many foreign-made aircraft, although I'm sure someone here can enlighten me. 

They're all on display by the way, at the Flying Heritage Collection Museum in Everett Washington, which opened in 2004.  If you're in Seattle and are interested in the trip a little north on the Five freeway, the place is open daily and entrance will run between $10 and $14.  

If you don't want to go all the way to Everett, there's another place I want to visit that's a little closer, but with an almost more impressive collection.  This one is Boeing's Museum of Flight which includes their third Dreamliner B787, an impressive aircraft which I had an opportunity to fly back from Japan late last year.

   

Time to start planning some more travel.