High-speed racing is accustomed to high-speed collisions, such is the nature of the sport.

But rarely have we seen a crash as dramatic as what took place on Saturday during the first of Formula E’s double-header of races in Rome.

On turn six of the ninth lap, Jaguar driver Sam Bird – leading the race at the time – appeared to lose control of the back of his car before colliding with the barrier to spin his car into the middle of the track.

This, as it turned out, was a particularly bad bit of luck for Bird who was unable to move in the middle of the track on a blind corner where cars travel at extremely high speeds. 2016/17 Formula E drivers champion Lucas di Grassi later called the corner “probably the most dangerous on this track.”

In the immediate aftermath, multiple cars made slight contact with Bird’s car, in particular Envision Racing’s Sebastien Buemi who hit the back of the Jaguar car, launching Buemi up and into the wall at an angle before he landed back down.

While other drivers were able to narrowly avoid a serious collision, while still making contact, the same could not be said about Maserati MSG Racing’s Edoardo Mortara who drove straight into the side of Bird’s car.

The race was immediately red flagged and delayed for 45 minutes. In total, six drivers could not continue in Saturday’s race because of their involvement in the crash.

The frustration of the drivers involved was evident to hear, particularly from Buemi.

“For f**k sake! When is this luck going to f**king stop? For f**k sake! What the f**k is that?” Buemi could be heard saying to his team on his radio.

“Guys, I’m so sorry but I couldn’t do anything.”

Thankfully, no driver sustained any serious injuries and all able to walk away.

One of the drivers whose race ended prematurely, di Grassi, expressed his relief at just being able to walk away with no injuries.

“I am very happy all the drivers are safe,” di Grassi said. “I had zero problem physically and the car had minor damage compared to what could have been, so in one way, we have been lucky today that nothing more serious happened.

“Thanks to the FIA and Formula E Safety requirements, also, not only for the car but also for the track – although that corner is probably the most dangerous on this track. It’s a very fast, blind corner and we are racing and there is no space to run off. In a straight, you can see more. In a corner like this, it is very hard to evaluate if the track is fully blocked or not. In the end, the safety of the drivers was due to the car being very strong and the track being well built.”

With a race the very next day, many of the teams worked until the early hours of the morning in an attempt to fix their cars, with Formula E presenter Saunders Carmichael-Brown reporting that after “one of the biggest incidents, if not the biggest we’ve seen in Formula E history on track,” there was a “massive collaborative effort” from almost a third of the paddock.

“A community effort to share parts and make sure we can get as many cars as possible on track [on Sunday],” Carmichael-Brown said.

Extraordinarily, all drivers involved in the collision made it on track for the second race of the double header, with Bird finishing third, Buemi fourth and Mortara fifth.

With a basketball résumé among the most accomplished in NBA history, Steph Curry went to work on his golfing CV over the weekend.

A walk-off eagle saw the Golden State Warriors icon win the American Century Championship in stunning fashion in Stateline, Nevada, on Sunday, becoming the first active professional athlete to win the celebrity tournament in 23 years.

Curry had lit up Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course with a sensational 152-yard hole-in-one on Saturday, and repeated his celebration of whisking off his cap and sprinting away after his nerveless final putt secured him a two-point victory over former US tennis player and playing partner Mardy Fish.

Yet while his second round ace had been marked by a charge down the fairway and a lap of the green, the 35-year-old toasted his winning eagle by heading straight for his wife Ayesha.

“She knows how much I love this game,” Curry told reporters.

“It’s always on the TV. It doesn’t matter what tournament it is, I’m watching the game. I’m trying to soak up as much as I can.

“So as soon as I made it, I made the putt, I knew where she was, and I had to go straight to her because I appreciate the fact that – even on our vacation – she’ll let me play.”

Victory saw the four-time NBA champion clinch the $125,000 winner’s prize for topping a star-studded US celebrity field of more than 90 players.

Hollywood actors, comedians, and entertainers all featured, but it was athletes past and present who made up the majority of the field, ranging from current NFL stars Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Aaron Rodgers to golfing great Annika Sorenstam.

Curry had taken a three point lead over Fish and NHL player Joe Pavelski into the third and final round of the event, which used the Modified Stableford format to award points by score per hole.

A final round 25 was enough to hold off Fish, who closed with 26, and see Curry join American NFL kicker Al Del Greco (2000) and Canadian NHL player Mario Lemieux (1998) as only the third active pro athlete to win the event.

Curry admitted that the tournament had been circled on his calendar ever since the Warriors’ hopes of an eighth franchise championship were ended by the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals in May.

“That was a lot of the motivation, not giving up hope that it would have to take till I was retired to be able to play more golf throughout the year to be ready for this,” Curry said.

“Even the last two months since we finished our playoff run till now, the preparation for this tournament has kind of always been the running joke, and it paid off.”

‘Therapy’

The two-time NBA MVP’s love for golf is well-documented, and in 2022, he launched the “Underrated Golf Tour” to provide a competitive, all-expenses paid opportunity for underrepresented young players.

For Curry, the fairways are his “therapy” away from the mania of the basketball season, yet the NBA’s all-time three-point scoring leader approaches golf with identical levels of focus.

At the first tee Sunday, the guard could be seen checking his pulse.

“I do that during timeouts in basketball … I wanted to get a check on where it was,” Curry admitted.

“I do a lot of breathing work during basketball games to control all of that and recover quicker. So I try to bring that philosophy out here because I’m a fish out of water out here on the course dealing with those emotions.

“It’s entirely different in a basketball game because it’s so reactive on the hardwood, but out here, you have to be able to control all of those thoughts and just seek positivity into yourself. Just tell yourself you’re built for this because you’ve been through other scenarios where you needed to perform and you live with the results.

“It’s not like you can will it in. You just live with the results.”

Prince George and Princess Charlotte, the two oldest children of Britain’s Prince and Princess of Wales, sat on the edge of their seats in the Royal Box to watch the nail-biting men’s Wimbledon final on Sunday.

The siblings, who are second and third in line to the throne, joined their parents as they applauded 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, who defeated World No. 2 Novak Djokovic to clinch his maiden Wimbledon title.

The family arrived at around noon local time (7 a.m. ET), and were greeted by Wimbledon staff, police dog Stella and British men’s wheelchair doubles’ champion Gordon Reid, the UK’s PA Media new agency reported.

Charlotte, aged eight, wore a floral blue dress for her first appearance at the prestigious tennis tournament, while 10-year-old George sported a navy blue suit and striped tie. They sat next to their parents, Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales.

The young Spaniard triumphed over Djokovic, aged 36, in a thrilling five-set final.

Alcaraz became the third-youngest Wimbledon champion in the Open Era, adding a second major title to his resume after winning the US Open in September.

The Prince and Princess of Wales congratulated Alcaraz on his effervescent victory.

“A day to remember,” Kensington Palace said in a statement on Twitter.

“Congratulations to the new men’s #Wimbledon champion @carlosalcaraz. And a massive thanks to everyone who makes @Wimbledon so special – until next year!”

King Felipe of Spain was also a guest in the Royal Box on Sunday, the BBC reported.

By the time the Silver State Hotshot crew arrived from Nevada a few weeks ago, Canada’s wildfires had already scorched millions of acres and shattered all-time burning records.

So everyone already knew what they were up against.

“In the scope for us, in the states, this would one of the largest fires to occur – ever … It’s a gigafire,” said Zac Krohn, a division supervisor with the US Forest Service as he briefed the hotshot crew on another steamy day in northern Quebec.

The firefighters on Saturday took in the instructions, suited up, shouldered axes and chain saws and hiked into burned and barren forests looking for dangerous hotspots still smoldering.

“At this point, we’re just trying to secure the edge and protect the community,” said Krohn. There was no taming these wildfires now, they were too vast and too hot, he said.

Crews know the work will be brutal: They have long days, as much as 16 hours, traveling to new areas detected as hotspots and sometimes hiking hours to get to them.

Canada is already on pace to have its worst wildfire season in recorded history and the season is little more than half over.

There are more than 880 fires burning throughout the country and the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre says at least 580 of the current wildfires are “out of control,” according to its website.

And the conflagrations are having an enormous impact on Canada’s neighbor, as well: Forecasters predicted around 70 million Americans on Monday would see decreased visibility and poor air quality, including residents of Chicago, Detroit, New York, St. Louis and Cleveland.

“It’s no understatement to say that the 2023 fire season is and will continue to be record-breaking in a number of ways,” said Michael Norton, a director general with Canada’s Northern Forestry Centre, during a technical briefing earlier this month.

“The total area burned now exceeds any year on record since we started measuring and keeping accurate records,” he said.

According to data, this weekend the country set yet another record – with nearly 25 million acres consumed, an area nearly the size of Ohio.

“When it’s the year to burn and the conditions are right, it’s just going to continue to burn. The best thing we can do as an incident management team is to focus on protection of people and communities,” said Matt Rau, an incident commander with the Southwest Area Incident Management Team based in the United States.

For weeks now, Rau’s hotshot crews have been scanning blackened and scarred forests from the air and on the ground trying to assess how best to protect people and property.

Amid the cliché on everyone’s lips – that Canada isn’t out of the woods yet – firefighters pitching in from all over the world are taking in the scope of this emergency.

The wildfires continue to defy history even though an increased number of firefighters and rainfall have managed to at least mitigate some of the damage. But the work is dangerous. On Sunday, Canadian authorities announced a second firefighter had died battling the wildfires.

Officials cautioned that any rain was like a drop in an otherwise empty bucket, with nearly every region in the grips of some stage of drought.

Temperatures were hotter than usual during the spring and severe weather and lightning strikes ignited forests already compromised by climate change.

“When they burn like this there’s no way to even put people in front of it to stop the fire, there’s no amount of resources on the ground or from the sky that’s going to be able to stop of these fires when they get the momentum,” said Rau.

His base of operations is in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, a Quebec town that has already evacuated twice since fire season started.

International crews from the US, South Korea, South Africa, Portugal and several other countries have pitched in, coordinating with Canadian resources that are already stretched.

And this weekend the Canadian government called in the military to help battle new blazes in western provinces. Bill Blair, the emergency preparedness minister, tweeted that he had approved a request for federal assistance and the armed forces would be deployed.

The town of Chibougamau, Quebec, is still on edge after evacuating the entire community of about 7,000 in a matter of hours in June.

Mayor Manon Cyr, on describing the decision to evacuate, said: “Strangely, I wasn’t scared, I was mad. And then I have to calm down and say, ‘Manon, you have a job to do. And that’s why I said to my people let’s stay calm, let’s be patient, keep it Zen.”

Residents have been back for weeks, but they know the threat will continue through summer, maybe longer.

“Don’t be surprised if it continues and, secondly, this is a problem that is going to go on into the future,” said Rau.

That also applies to US residents who once again this week will be dealing with air quality alerts, now from wildfires in Canada’s west, he said.

Canadian wildfire smoke is bringing unhealthy air across the northern tier of the United States to start the week, triggering air quality alerts for more than a dozen states from Montana to Vermont.

Forecasters predicted around 70 million people would see decreased visibility and poor air quality, including residents of Chicago, Detroit, New York, St. Louis and Cleveland.

On Monday, the plume of smoke stretched across the US like a noxious belt with several states experiencing “unhealthy” air, which is Level 4 of 6 on the Air Quality Index. Some of the unhealthy air stretched as far south as northern Alabama on Monday morning.

The smoke could linger into Tuesday across parts of the East Coast, but is not forecast to reach the same “hazardous” levels there as it did in early June. The smoke should get less potent as the week progresses, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

The entire state of New York is under air quality health advisory due to smoke from wildfires in western Canada. “The smoke is expected to cause the Air Quality Index to reach levels in Upstate communities which are ‘Unhealthy for All’ New Yorkers,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a news release.

The state is activating emergency notifications on roads and making masks available for distribution, Hochul said.

Winds will continue to push the smoke eastward, bringing a smoky haze to the Northeast early in the week.

Hundreds of fires burning across Canada

The plume was birthed from nearly 400 fires ignited in Canada’s province of British Columbia in the past week, nearly half of which were started by 51,000 lightning strikes from thunderstorms, the British Columbia Wildfire Service said. Some of those thunderstorms were “dry” or produced inconsequential amounts of rain to help quench any fires – a dangerous prospect in a province experiencing the worst level of drought.

The province is expected to receive federal assistance to help with its ongoing wildfires, according to a Sunday news release from Public Safety Canada.

There are more than 880 fires burning throughout Canada and the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre says at least 580 of the current wildfires are “out of control,” according to its website.

On Sunday, Canadian authorities announced a second firefighter had died battling the wildfires.

“We regret to share the tragic news that a firefighter from Fort Liard has passed away from an injury sustained while fighting a wildfire in the Fort Liard District Saturday afternoon,” Canada’s Northwest Territories said in a statement.

On Thursday, officials had confirmed the death of a firefighter responding to a blaze near Revelstoke, a town in southeastern British Columbia.

“I’m incredibly saddened by the news from the Northwest Territories, that another firefighter has lost their life battling wildfires,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted Sunday. “To their family, their friends, and those they were heroically serving alongside: Canadians are keeping you in our thoughts. We’re here for you.”

Pollutants affect millions

Wildfire smoke contains tiny pollutants known as particle matter, or PM 2.5, that can get into the lungs and bloodstream once inhaled. These pollutants most commonly cause difficulty breathing and eye and throat irritation, but have also been linked to more serious long-term health issues like lung cancer, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Parts of the US will be at risk of smoke for the foreseeable future depending on weather patterns and fire flare-ups because Canada is experiencing its worst fire season on record. More than 24 million acres have burned so far this year, an area roughly the size of Indiana.

British Columbia has had more than 1,000 fires start since April. Those fires have already burned through nearly three times the amount of land compared to an average year in British Columbia over the last 10 years, the province’s wildfire service said.

The Atlantic hurricane season is headed into uncharted territory with water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico warmer than they have ever been on record.

Seasonal forecasters are warning it means you need to prepare for a more uncertain forecast for the rest of the season with the potential for more storms and stronger ones.

Warm ocean water is one of the key ingredients for fueling hurricanes and it’s been in abundance so far this year. Scientists first sounded the alarm in April and the ocean warmth has only escalated since. Water in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic has been record warm, especially for this early in the year. It includes off the coast of Florida, where water temperatures in the Florida Keys were close to 97 degrees in some spots last week.

But hurricane season predictions involve more than just warm water. It’s just one factor in the birth and survival of tropical cyclones, and it is creating more uncertainty than usual in what could happen the rest of the hurricane season.

“Uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty! That’s really the story going forward with this season,” Dr. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University told me.

Klotzbach and the team at CSU are some of the pioneers of long-term hurricane season outlooks, and just increased the number of expected hurricanes and major hurricanes in their prediction for this season due to the warmer water in the Atlantic.

What makes this year even more uncertain is we are now under the influence of El Niño which typically suppresses activity in the Atlantic with increased wind shear, the changing of wind direction and speed with height which can blow budding storms to pieces and shred existing storms to death.

Klotzbach said the confluence of these record warm temperatures at the same time as a moderate to strong El Niño hasn’t been “observed historically.”

The million-dollar question right now is which will win out: warm ocean temperatures or El Niño. Early season predictions called for a near-average season, but Klotzbach and team seem to think the warm water will win out and are now calling for “an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season.”

Warm water won in June. According to Klotzbach, June had the lowest wind shear in the southern Atlantic Basin since 1988. Arlene, Bret and Cindy formed as a result.

Wind shear and dry air from Saharan dust picked up in the month of July, suppressing hurricane activity for the most part, but August through October could be different.

“Most climate models are forecasting slightly to somewhat-below normal shear in August, September and even into October,” Klotzbach said. “If that were the case, we would likely have an extremely busy season given how warm the Atlantic is.”

As of now, there’s not much noteworthy on the horizon as far as tropical development goes. Subtropical Storm Don is meandering around the north-central Atlantic but poses no threat to land. Forecast models aren’t picking up any development this week. Forecasts for next week are hinting at some tropical development, but it’s far too early to have confidence in how, if or when this could materialize.

What we do know is hurricane season typically starts ramping up as we head into August. The first hurricane usually forms in early to mid-August. The eight-week span from mid-August through mid-October is when ocean temperatures are nearing their highest levels in the Atlantic, wind shear lessens considerably and when nearly 90% of all hurricane activity in the Atlantic happens.

The bottom line is this season is already unprecedented given the hot ocean temperatures, so forecasting the season in the uncharted territory we’ve entered is a challenge. We’ve got a lot of hurricane season left to go, which means you should prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Authorities have identified the two children still missing nearly two days after they were swept away by turbulent floodwaters that killed their mother.

Matilda “Mattie” Sheils, 2, and her 9-month-old brother, Conrad Sheils, vanished after intense flooding engulfed parts of southeast Pennsylvania on Saturday evening.

The body of their mother, 32-year-old Katie Seley, was found late Saturday.

A family member acting as a spokesperson expressed the family’s gratitude to the searchers at a news conference Monday afternoon.

“Their compassion, kindness and bravery have given us strengthen in this unspeakably difficult time,” said Scott Ellis, brother-in-law of Jim Sheils, Seley’s fiancé.

Seley was among five people who died after storms pummeled Bucks County over the weekend, according to Upper Makefield Fire Company Chief Tim Brewer.

The Bucks County coroner identified the other victims as Enzo Depiero, 78, and Linda Depiero, 74, of Newtown Township; Susan Barnhart, 53, of Titusville, New Jersey; and Yuko Love, 64, of Newtown Township. According to a news release from the coroner, they all died from drowning. Love’s cause of death was listed as drowning with multiple injuries.

The victims didn’t travel into already high water, Brewer noted at the news conference. “They were caught,” he said. “This was a flash flood. … The wall of water came to them.”

Brewer earlier said officials had tripled the number of resources in the search for the missing Sheils children.

Thanks to improving weather, searchers can use more resources, including underwater and air assets as well as drones and search dogs, to look for Mattie and Conrad.

The family was visiting from South Carolina and were driving to a barbecue when they got stuck in flash flooding, Brewer said Sunday.

The mother and a grandmother grabbed Mattie and Conrad. The father grabbed the children’s 4-year-old brother.

The father and the 4-year-old “miraculously” made it to safety, the fire chief said. But the mother, grandmother and younger children were swept away.

The children’s grandmother survived and was treated at a hospital, police said.

“The mass casualty incident, like these, which we have never seen before, (is) unbelievable and devastating to all the families involved,” he said.

Over the past month, parts of interior New England and the Northeast have seen 200% to 300% of their average monthly rainfall, leading to last week’s disastrous flooding in parts of Vermont, New York and western Massachusetts.

Floods are among the deadliest weather hazards in the US, according to the National Weather Service. It only takes 2 feet of rushing water to carry away most vehicles, including pickups and SUVs, according to the weather service.

A flash flood can happen anywhere intense rain falls faster than the soil can absorb, and generally happen within a short time period after rain, making them more life-threatening, according to the National Weather Service.

Ever wondered what happens when a jetsetting flight attendant swaps life in the skies for life on the ground? If the experiences of former Pan American World Airways crew are anything to go by, life takes off in a completely different direction.

Pan Am has always been synonymous with glamor, and its flight attendants lived their opportunities to the max. It was a career filled with luxury and international intrigue, going to Rome one day and Rio the next.

It was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn more about people, places, and cultures worldwide.

“My experiences with Pan Am helped shape the global perspectives and understanding of the human experience that I hold to this day,” says former flight attendant Camille Lewis. Pan Am flight attendants doubled as ambassadors for the airline. They brought diverse viewpoints to the skies, and valued inclusion.

When the airline folded on December 4, 1991, a grand era in aviation history came to a close – but those who once called a Boeing 747 their office, and the world their home, found unique ways to take their lives to new heights.

What happened next? How do you harness all those experiences to take your next step? Seven former Pan Am flight attendants tell us where they ended up.

Camille Lewis

Growing up, Camille Lewis’s plan was to finish college and work in corporate management. However, she traded in the office for wings. “Flying gave me an uncommon, global perspective and extended education,” she says.

“There were unique exposures, social experiences, and a global perspective that could not reasonably be obtained any other way for the average young American. I remember riding camels in Pakistan, [enjoying] the hotel pool in Rio de Janeiro, bargaining with shop vendors in Nairobi, eating, drinking, and laughing all day at Caesar’s Beach in Liberia, and making trips to Saudi Arabia on my favorite airplane, the 747SP” – a shorter, longer-range 747.

“The memories are vast and have lasted a lifetime. I only traveled a little on vacations. My job, in many ways, was a vacation.”

Her most memorable passengers were Mother Teresa and primatologist Jane Goodall. She also played her part in history – one of her passengers was Michèle Bennett, the wife of Haiti’s dictator ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier of Haiti. She and her entire entourage were on their way from New York to Paris after the first family had fled the country.

Today Camille is a retired school principal in Los Angeles, following a 30-year career in education. Her career as a flight attendant made her familiar with many cultural aspects of the diverse community that makes up California schools, she says – giving her an advantage in her new career.

Phillip Keene

Actor and philanthropist Phillip Keene has Pan Am roots. In 1987, he answered an LA Times recruitment ad for the airline. It would change the direction of his life, taking him from a dead-end job in California to a glamorous life, circling the globe from his new base in London.

He watched as the pages of his passport filled with new stamps from countries around the globe. Working with Pan Am was “eye-opening, educational, exciting, exhilarating and expensive, while living in London and Amsterdam,” he says.

Meeting celebrities onboard – like movie and TV stars John Gielgud, Tracey Ullman, hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, and rock band Huey Lewis and the News – gave him a glimpse of what his future life could be.

Today, Keene is an actor living in Paris and traveling regularly to Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, the UK and the US. He can be seen in the award-winning shows “Major Crimes” and “The Closer,” in which he plays Buzz Watson, the tech-savvy member of LAPD’s team.

Keene keeps his Pan Am love alive with his 3,500-strong collection of airline memorabilia – said to be the world’s largest collection.

Karren Pope-Onwukwe

“Traveling around the world broadened my view of life and exposed me to fine wine, gourmet food, and real couture,” says Pope-Onwukwe, who was a flight attendant from 1980 to 1991.

One of her favorite trips was flying to Dakar, Senegal, on the 747, where she was language-qualified to deliver French announcements. And her love of traveling took her to other warm destinations like the Caribbean, where she had a chance to meet Susan L. Taylor, the formidable former editor of Essence magazine.

Her flights often had celebrities on board. Author and civil right activist Coretta Scott King traveled with her own peanuts (still in their shell), while boxing promoter Don King was “hilarious” during a flight from Italy. “He engaged with the crew and the passengers, smiling and joking – his laugh itself made you smile,” she remembers.

If that wasn’t enough celebrity overload, she once shared an airport-to-airport limo ride with singer James Brown, from La Guardia to JFK. “He was nice enough to give me a ride; we were both trying to make our flights.”

Losing the glamorous lifestyle has been hard, she says: “I still love hotels and room service, laundry service, spa treatments, and drinking poolside.” Yet much of what she learned at Pan Am remains. Pope-Onwukwe credits the airline with making her independent and confident. Today, she practices law in Maryland and has had her own company since 2000.

Linda Reynolds

Jetting in to different cities across the globe heightened Linda’s love for international intrigue and espionage. Her experiences getting to know places and cultures inspired her three novels: “Spies In Our Midst,” “Spies We Know,” and “One Deliberate Act.”

“Pan Am gave me so much knowledge about the world and introduced me to people in the intelligence and diplomatic communities. I use all that in my writing,” she says.

Reynolds once spent a flight from New York to London chatting with US broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite: “He was exactly what everyone wanted him to be: kind, personable, intelligent, interesting, and a great conversationalist.”

The airline also brought her into contact with her husband, Joe, who was a Pan Am station manager in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Pan Am was their life, so when the airline folded it was a double blow.

“The memory that sticks with me is how passengers felt seeing that big Pan Am blue ball on the airplane tail,” says Reynolds.

“Living or traveling abroad is not always a lark … sometimes the place just explodes in danger. Whether the Vietnam War, natural disasters, or the overthrow of a government, we were always there to evacuate and care for people. It was our calling, and we went. I remember people literally kneeling and kissing the floor of the aircraft … their relief was palpable. Pan Am meant home.”

Penny Powell

In 1985 Powell, a fluent Spanish speaker, began what she calls “the best career of my life.” Living in Paris, she was based out of London.

Her love of Pan Am lives on in her current business: making candles. Penny’s Flame candles have a collection named “Clipper Blue Lights” after the nickname for Pan Am planes, “Clippers.”

Her candle business is a recent move. After Pan Am, Powell moved to another airline, until she married, raised her daughter in Chicago, and trained as a realtor.

Elena Williams

For five years, Williams flew the friendly skies after graduating college, looking to add excitement to her life. Fun-filled layovers sometimes meant meeting other airline crew in exotic places – on a trip to Rome, she and her roommate went to dinner with two Italian Learjet pilots.

“They met us at the Metropole Hotel, and we went to a romantic dinner with violin players. They carried us in their arms into the Trevi fountain and back to the hotel for a nightcap. The next day they stood on the wings of their jet and blew kisses across the Tarmac as our flight readied for take off. We had gotten zero sleep on the layover, but we walked on cloud back to New York.”

One, she met JFK Jr. on a flight. “He came up and shook my hand and said, “I’m John F. Kennedy, Jr.” I shook his hand and said, “I’m Elena Sugarman!”

After leaving Pan Am, Williams headed home to Memphis to become a Spanish teacher, sharing how a second language can take you around the world. She’s still there today, enjoying family life and her dance club “The Energizers.”

Annita Thomas

I, too, was a Pan Am flight attendant in the 1980s, jetsetting to Rome one week and across West and East Africa the next. My life was filled with meeting interesting people, learning about different cultures, and trying foods a young girl from South Georgia hadn’t known existed.

On a 20-hour flight from JFK to Tokyo’s Narita airport, I had my first cross-cultural experience serving soba noodles. Slurping is the Japanese way to eat noodles – it demonstrates enjoyment. I didn’t know this – my mom had always taught me to swirl the noodles around my fork and not slurp. The sound of over 200 passengers slurping together was both surprising and shocking. I couldn’t believe it.

I realized I’d had a cultural experience. While one mom in Georgia was teaching her daughter to quietly swirl noodles, thousands of miles away, another mother was teaching her children to slurp them with sounds of delight. This single flight broadened my curiosity and made me interested in learning more about the cultures of the places I visited.

It wasn’t all so positive. We were also greeted with not-so-friendly skies when coups and political uprisings disrupted air travel, but our training taught us to stay in control during emergencies and high-pressure situations. In April 1980 I was in Liberia, sequestered in a hotel at the Robertsfield airport (now Roberts International Airport) after a coup d’etat which killed president William Tolbert and 13 of his cabinet members.

Over the 11 years, working for Pan Am changed my outlook on the world. It prepared me for my current role as host of “Travel With Annita,” a travel radio show inspiring listeners to put down the glossy brochures and go out to have their own adventures.

Keeping the fires burning

Pan Am flight attendants find ways to keep the spirit alive. Memories live on, with many of us becoming members of World Wings International, a non-profit organization of former Pan Am flight attendants. We focus on philanthropic work through four international and 23 domestic chapters supporting our community needs.

Other former Pan Am flight attendants have unique ways of honoring the airline. One, David Hinson, has co-created accessories line David Jeffery, many with Pan Am themes. Their items have been selected several times for Oprah’s “Favorite Things” list. Linda Little Freire heads the Pan Am Museum Foundation, where you’ll find exhibits dedicated to the airline. The foundation also has a podcast filled with Pan Am stories.

For those of us lucky enough to fly for the airline, Pan Am shaped our world and gave us courage, wisdom, and a large, powerful dose of “you can do it.” Ask any “Pan Amer” their favorite slogan from their time crisscrossing the skies, and they’ll likely say, “Pan Am, you can’t beat the experience.”

The polar bear was just a faraway speck in a frozen white expanse. A film crew began to follow at a distance, gradually getting closer. Suddenly the bear picked up a scent and changed direction – the crew followed, hoping it would lead to footage of a kill. The bear came to a rest at a seal hole in the ice and started to wait. So did the crew.

For 12 hours they sat, waiting for the bear to make a move. For 12 hours the bear lay half asleep, half awake at the edge of the hole. It was too long; the crew had been awake working for 22 hours straight on the sea ice and needed to get back to camp. Cold and exhausted, they admitted defeat. Hours of waiting for little reward is not uncommon. “It’s the price we pay to get unique images,” recounts award-winning French photographer and filmmaker Florian Ledoux.

This is the reality of wildlife photography – it is always on nature’s terms. But that’s the challenge and attraction of it, too. “Every shot we get in the Arctic is a battle,” he says. “We push our limits; we feel alive by doing it.”

He has spent the last two winters on the Arctic sea ice, filming iconic scenes for the BBC’s nature documentary series “Frozen Planet” and the Disney film “Polar Bear” among others. Driven by a passion to preserve nature, his extraordinary aerial photography has earned him awards such as the 2018 Siena International Photo Awards drone photographer of the year and Nature TTL’s photographer of the year in 2020. Now he’s planning for his 2023 winter expedition, which will see him setting off from Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost settlement, to spend days and nights on the sea ice.

“If we start at the end of February, we have a bit of light. The sun passes above the horizon around 11am or 12pm and then it’s dark at 2pm or 3pm,” he explains. From then on, the hours of light rapidly increase. “At the beginning of April, you can’t see the stars anymore, and by mid-April you have the midnight sun,” he adds.

The months when the sun just starts to poke through create the perfect palette for a photographer, Ledoux says. Every pastel shade of blue shines through and as the sun disappears, a pink belt shimmers on the horizon.

But capturing this Arctic twilight comes at a cost. Ledoux describes how the obliterating winter conditions take their physical toll – overwhelming darkness and low vitamin D levels affect your mood, the lack of routine messes up your body clock, and you are forever fighting the bitter cold, with temperatures on some days plummeting to minus 40 degrees Celsius. On those days, everything you touch with bare hands sticks to your skin and every time you exhale the moisture freezes on your face, he says. Despite wearing several layers of clothes, huge down mittens and a neoprene face mask and ski goggles, the cold bites through.

Yet these are the days Ledoux lives for. There was a time last winter, when the air was crisp, the sun was low, and an intense silence enveloped the sea ice. He spotted steam rising from behind an iceberg and, following it with his drone, discovered a large male polar bear asleep on the ice: “His body was warm and as he was breathing, smoke came out of his mouth like a dragon.”

Starring roles

Despite being out in the wilderness beyond most human contact, Ledoux is often at the mercy of a producer’s shot list. Disney, Netflix or the likes will request a specific shot of a polar bear, such as a successful hunt or a mating scene. Ticking these off can take days or months, but the key is not to rush it.

After finding a bear, the crew will position itself ahead of the bear and wait for it to gradually come closer. “We want to make sure the bear likes us,” says Ledoux, adding that to capture candid and unique behavior the bear needs to feel comfortable in their presence. If a bear is skittish or reacts badly to them being there, they will stop pursuing it. “That’s just the way it is – if it doesn’t want to be the star, you can’t force it.”

Over time, Ledoux believes you begin to recognize individual bears. Some look different, with the shape of their face or physical markings giving them away. Others have distinct characters; some are shy and some are curious and playful.

One of his blockbuster shots, which took pride of place in Disney’s “Polar Bear”, shows two bears joyfully ice skating together. Ledoux had never witnessed two bears having such fun: “It was pure magic. We were so high after that we forgot to eat all day or night.”

The feeling of being close to a polar bear is addictive, he says. The first time he saw one he had goosebumps, and despite hundreds of encounters since, that reaction hasn’t died down. “They are so majestic and beautiful … It brings (up) a lot of emotions,” he adds. His goal is to convey these emotions through his images.

Melting ice

One of Ledoux’s photos, which landed the cover of Oceanographic Magazine and Wildlife Photographic, shows a polar bear leaping precariously between broken bits of ice. It sends a message of fragility and reflects the threat of shrinking ice sheets. The Arctic is heating up nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, causing ice to melt and threatening the whole ecosystem that depends on it.

Even in the few years Ledoux has explored the Arctic, he has witnessed these changes. It has rained for days in the winter months and the terrain they can work on is diminishing as sea ice becomes less stable.

“It’s important to document,” he says, comparing his role to that of a war photographer, albeit at a slower pace and less imminently dangerous. There is an urgency, and he feels a duty to record what is happening.

“Would I fly the drone just for flying the drone? No,” he says. “The drone is a tool that allows me to capture some unique beauty and perspective of nature, to give a voice to the one that cannot speak.”

Two more tourists have been caught apparently defacing the Colosseum in Rome, following a similar incident in June.

The very next day, a 17-year-old student from Germany was caught allegedly doing something similar. This time, a security guard spotted the teen and reported him to the Carabinieri.

Both teenagers risk a fine of up to €15,000 ($16,850) and up to five years in jail.

This is the same punishment potentially faced by a 27-year-old British tourist who was filmed apparently carving his name into the wall of the ancient arena last month.

The man, Ivan Dimitrov, later sent a letter of apology to the local prosecutor’s office, according to his defense lawyer.

Dimitrov allegedly scratched “Ivan+Hayley 23” into the wall of the Colosseum, representing his and his girlfriend’s names.

Following the release of the video, Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, called for the perpetrator to be “sanctioned according to our laws” in a tweet.

“I consider it very serious, unworthy and a sign of great incivility that a tourist defaces one of the most famous places in the world, a historical heritage (site) such as the Colosseum, to carve the name of his fiancée,” he said.

A similar incident also occurred in 2020, when security staff spotted an Irish tourist allegedly carving his initials into the ancient structure and reported him to the police.