Today’s word of the day, thanks to Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary), is piebald. Pronounced / ˈpaɪˌbɔld /, just as it’s spelled, the adjective means “having patches of black and white or of other colors; parti-colored” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/piebald).

According to Etymonline.com, with the meaning “’of two different colors, having spots or patches of white and black or another color,’” the word appears in English in the “1580s, formed from pie (n.2) ‘magpie’ + bald in its older sense of ‘spotted, white;’ in reference to the black-and-white plumage of the magpie. Hence, ‘of mixed character, heterogeneous, mongrel’ (1580s). Properly only of black-and-white colorings (compare skewbald)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=piebald). Skewbald comes in in the “1650s, ‘having white and brown (or some other color) patches, spotted in an irregular manner’ (used especially of horses), from skued, skeued ‘skewbald, of mixed colors’ (early 15c.) + bald ‘having white patches’” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/skewbald).

Merriam-Webster says it all a bit more casually: “To many people, the noisy black and white birds that go by the scientific name Pica pica—better known as magpies—are nothing but pests. But the Latin root that was adopted for their name isn’t a linguistic nuisance; it played an important role in the development of piebald. The pie of piebald (pie is another name for a magpie) derives from pica, which is Latin for ‘magpie.’ The other part of piebald comes from the word bald, which can mean ‘marked with white’; it can also be found in skewbald, an adjective used to describe animals marked with patches of white and any other color but black” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piebald).

On this date in 1938, according to On This Day, “Douglas ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan arrives in Ireland after a 28-hour flight, supposedly leaving New York flying for California” (https://www.onthisday.com/events/july/18).

Douglas (born Clyde Groce) Corrigan (1907-1995) was a high-school drop out who became a self-taught airplane mechanic and a pilot. He helped to build the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane Charles Lindbergh used to fly from New York to Paris. He moved from one airplane company to another as a mechanic, learning along the way. He also increased his flying time and learned to do tricks in the air (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Corrigan). His experience with Lindbergh, watching him fly, inspired Corrigan to want to do something similar.

While flying around the country taking people on rides for money, he bought his own plane, a Curtiss Robin J1, for $325 (ibid.; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_Robin). “He decided to refurbish his Curtiss Robin and pursue his dream of flying across the Atlantic. He knew that attempting such a flight might kill him–but he was sure it certainly would not be boring. Since he was Irish American, Corrigan naturally chose Dublin as his destination. He bought a new engine for his plane–a Wright J6-5 with 165 horsepower and five cylinders. He also built and installed the extra gas tanks that he would need if he were to attempt a transatlantic flight. As far as he was concerned, Douglas Corrigan was all set to be the first man to fly nonstop from New York to Dublin. But it was not to be that simple. When a federal inspector checked out the plane, he licensed it for cross-country flights only” (https://www.historynet.com/the-adventures-of-wrong-way-corrigan/).

“The next year, 1937, he reapplied for permission to make the flight, but Amelia Earhart had disappeared over the Pacific just a few months earlier, and nobody in Washington wanted to give the go-ahead for another solo ocean flight at that juncture. Worse yet, the government even refused to renew the license for Corrigan’s plane, which meant that he would not be able to fly anywhere. ‘It looked like I was stopped now for sure,’ he later wrote” (ibid.).

In 1938, he flew from California to New York to try to get permission to fly to Dublin, but he was denied. His plane was licensed only for cross-country flight. When he took off on July 17, he had filed a flight plan for a return trip to California and had a map of the United States. But he took off and headed east instead.

The flight was not without its problems. For instance, he had a gas leak. “Corrigan had been flying east for 10 hours when his feet suddenly felt cold. The leak in the main gas tank had gotten worse, and gasoline was running all over his shoes and onto the floor of the cockpit. He was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean at that point–and he was losing fuel by the minute.

“He flew on through the darkness. Time was not on his side, and the leak was getting worse. Before long, there was gasoline an inch deep on the cockpit floor. Just losing the gas was bad enough, but Corrigan was worried that it would leak out near the exhaust pipe–and he was well aware that he had no chance of surviving if that happened.

“He knew he had to do something about the leak, but he did not have much to work with. He had only brought a screwdriver with him. With it, he punched a hole in the floor. The gasoline trickled out–on the side opposite the exhaust pipe. He was still losing fuel, but at least the plane was not likely to explode.

“Although it was impossible for him to fix the leak, Corrigan kept trying to think of some way to compensate for it. The problem had not been nearly this bad on his cross-country flight, and he had just barely made it to New York. And on this trip there was no place to land if his gas ran out.

“He had planned to conserve fuel by running the engine slowly, but now he realized that that would only give the fuel more time to leak out. He decided to run the engine fast instead, using the precious gasoline while he had it. He boosted his rpms from 1,600 to 1,900, then maintained that speed for the rest of the trip.

“Corrigan flew straight ahead, hoping he would have enough fuel to reach land. When he saw a fishing boat, he went down close to the water and flew past it. Corrigan realized it was unlikely that such a small boat would be very far from shore. It looked like he was going to make it, and he opened a package of fig bars to celebrate” (ibid.).

He arrived in Dublin without a passport or visa, having flown without properly filing his flight plan, and against the express rules of the authorities. And while he continuously stuck to the story that he had somehow gotten lost and flown the wrong way, most people assumed that he had just done what he had wanted to do. His license was suspended, but only for a little while. He was feted when he returned home, and he became a kind of legend, though he was given the nickname Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

He arrived in New York on August 4, 1938, and on August 5, he was given a ticker-tape parade. The ticker-tape was all white, since it was used white paper that was made into confetti. Then again, if there was enough ink on that tape, it might have been piebald.

The image for today is of that ticker-tape parade on August 5, 1938 (https://www.historynet.com/the-adventures-of-wrong-way-corrigan/).