[1920s NOVELTY NEWSREELS]

Genre: Newsreel

Year Published: 1920s

Sound: silent

Description: This short, silent novelty newsreel dates to the 1920s. It begins with Ferdinand Schulz breaking his own record for flying a glider for over 14 hours in Koenigsberg, Germany. At 1:00, "Cleaning the Colosseum" shows a gardener dealing with weeds at the ancient Roman Coliseum in Rome. At 2:10, a "Stunt on Stilts" in Chicago as a man on stilts walks across exposed beams of a skyscraper. At 2:51, "Commander Byrd and the America" shows Admiral Richard C. Byrd and his famous aircraft before attempting to make a flight from Roosevelt Field, New York to Paris. Joining him in the attempt are Bert Acosta, George Noville and Berndt Balchen. The film ends with the aircraft taking off. America was a Fokker C-2 trimotor monoplane that was flown in 1927 by Richard E. Byrd, Bernt Balchen, George Otto Noville, and Bert Acosta on their transatlantic flight.The America was destroyed after it was ditched near the French village of Ver-sur-Mer, having flown to Paris but being unable to land due to fog