Nine reportedly dead in Panama helicopter crash
     PANAMA CITY, Panama --- November 26, 1997 07:47 a.m. EST -- A
 government helicopter believed to be carrying police and Colombian
 refugees has crashed in the remote southern province of Darien.
 Local media reported nine people dead and two injured.
     An official of the National Air Service, which operated the
 craft, confirmed that the crash occurred but refused to specify
 the number of victims.
     News reports said the crash occurred Tuesday in Meteti, a
 village near the provincial capital of La Palma.
     The dead were four policemen and five people believed to be
 Colombian refugees.
     The area where the accident was reported is densely forested
 and has few communications links with the capital.
     Panama has stepped up policing of the southern province after
 thousands of refugees and some armed groups streamed over the border
 from neighboring Colombia in the last two years.
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     LANGLEY, Samuel P. (1834-1906). On May 6, 1896, a strange
 machine flew one half mile (800 meters) over the Potomac River near
 Washington, D.C. The odd craft was about 16 feet (4.8 meters) long
 and weighed some 26 pounds (12 kilograms). It flew about a minute
 and a half. This was the first time a power-driven, heavier-than-air
 machine stayed in the air for more than just a few seconds.
 (A picture of this model in flight, taken by Dr. Alexander Graham
 Bell was published in National Geographic Magazine, page 236, Aug.
 1927 issue. Jim)
     The builder of this airplane model was Samuel Pierpont Langley,
 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. After many laboratory ex-
 periments, he had finally shown that extended mechanical flight was
 possible. Later he built a 56-foot (17-meter) machine for the War
 Department. Two attempts to launch it in 1903 failed. The Wright
 brothers, however, proved the worth of Langley's ideas in their
 successful man-carrying airplane.
     Langley's interest in aeronautics began in Roxbury, Mass., where
 he was born on Aug. 22, 1834. He watched gulls wheel and soar, using
 their wings only to meet new wind currents. His father's telescope
 gave him knowledge of astronomy. He attended Boston Latin School but
 did not go to college.
     Langley was appointed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
 in 1887. He made the exhibits interesting for people of ordinary
 education and ordered the institution's books to be written in
 simple language. He established the Children's Room. Langley put
 into it things that children like--stuffed birds with their nests
 and eggs, odd sea animals, bright shells, and coral formations.
 He collected animals for a zoo, and from this collection grew the
 National Zoological Park.
     Langley died on Feb. 27, 1906, in Aiken, S.C.
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