WORLD RECORD

By any measure 1976 was a big deal. The Concorde made the first-ever supersonic commercial flight out of Heathrow; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer; the Space Shuttle Enterprise debuted; and two separate Viking missions successfully landed on Mars—all in America’s bicentennial year. Buoyed by patriotism and the desire to push himself forward (and to have some fun) Arnold Palmer set an around-theworld flight record in a Learjet 36, a record that still stands today. On a red, white, and blue plane named “Freedom’s Way USA,” with the tail number 200 Yankee (N200Y), Palmer and co-pilots James E. Bir and Lewis L. “Bill” Purkey, along with aviation writer Robert Serling (brother of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling), left Denver, Colorado, on May 17, heading to Boston, the first stop of their trip. The plan was to travel from there to Paris, but headwinds compelled them to redirect to Glamorgan, Wales, for refueling. Paris came next, then Tehran, Iran; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Jakarta, Indonesia; Manila, Philippines; Wake Island; and Honolulu, Hawaii, before landing back in Denver. Recounting the Sri Lanka stop, Palmer later said, “They met me at the plane with an elephant, and I rode into town for the golf awards and then back.” Leaving Manila, the crew faced the oncoming Typhoon Olga, but managed to get out just before it landed. In Hawaii things were more pleasant, local girls offered flowered leis and the golf star demonstrated his swing on the tarmac before climbing aboard to make the last segment of the trip. The foursome landed in Denver on May 19, 57 hours, 25 minutes and 42 second after leaving—a record that still stands today for that class of jet. A Swiss crew tried to beat it in 2010, but came up short by more than half an hour.