Today is the birthday of both Graf Zeppelin the man and Graf Zeppelin the airship.
Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin — better known in English as Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin — was born on July 8, 1838.
The first airship to bear his name — LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin — was christened by his daughter, Countess Helene von Brandenstein-Zeppelin, on July 8, 1928.
Remarkable to consider that the LZ-127 had no heat, only one public area (a 20′ by 20′ room with four windows) and a shared washroom. Yet she was the most successful passenger airship in history, which would have been easily eclipsed by the far more comfortable and larger Hinderburg class… Read more »