Latest news with #Kellner
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Illinois man has spent 40 years rebuilding a WWII-era B-17 bomber in his barn
A man in Marengo, Illinois, is on a mission to fully restore a World War II-era B-17 bomber—a project he's been diligently working on in a roadside barn for the past 40 years. A lifelong aviation enthusiast, Mike Kellner began his journey in high school after hearing that a junkyard in Maine was looking to offload the abandoned remains of the historic bomber. The asking price was '$7,000 or best offer' for a collection of disassembled parts. Kellner loaded the 75-foot aluminum behemoth onto a house trailer (he had to extend it by about 10 feet) and hauled it halfway across the country with a pickup truck. It's lived in his barn ever since. Kellner shared the decades-long story of his restoration project with local outlet WGN earlier this week. And unlike many World War II-era roadside relics, this one isn't just collecting dust. Kellner has spent countless hours working to restore the plane to its former glory, performing his own repairs, adding finishing touches, and tracking down an array of rare and hard-to-find parts. Word of his efforts spread, attracting other aviation enthusiasts who have volunteered their time over the years to assist with the restoration. Kellner documents the entire process on a Facebook page, which features thousands of update posts dating back to 2010. He doesn't just want the project to be something pretty to look at—he wants it to fly. 'It is a piece of history, and I would like the opportunity to fly it,' Kellner told WGN. Popular Science reached out to Kellner for more details but has not heard back. The B-17 was the most iconic bomber used by the US military during the second World War. Its origin actually traces back a decade earlier to 1934, when the Army Air Corps approached Boeing with an ask to design and develop a massive plane capable of carrying bombs at 10,000 feet and for more than 10 hours. The military wanted a new breed of bomber that would be able to travel beyond enemy lines at great distances and drop bombs with precision. It needed to be able to reach altitudes high enough to fly outside of the range of enemy antiaircraft artillery. The eventual B-17 featured a state-of-the-art Norden bombsight to maintain accuracy even at extreme altitudes. Early versions of the B-17 entered production in 1937, but manufacturing ramped up significantly after the U.S. officially entered World War II in 1941. The bomber that eventually flew missions behind enemy lines featured four engines—a major upgrade from the then-standard two—and was equipped with a smattering of gun turrets, including ones in the nose, upper fuselage, and tail. This cornucopia of munitions, combined with the aircraft's mammoth size, earned it the nickname 'Flying Fortress.' The B-17 currently being resurrected in Kellner's barn reportedly carries two names. One, 'Desert Rat,' is painted in bold yellow lettering on the aircraft's exterior. The other, 'Tangerine,' was discovered later, scrawled somewhere inside the unclear how much longer Kellner will need to make his dream of flying the Desert Rat a reality. The task seems like a daunting one for someone working part-time on a shoestring budget but then again, few would have likely predicted he would have made it this far to begin with. You can keep up with all of Kellner's progress by following his official Facebook page here.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Suburban man brings history back to life with 75-foot WWII aircraft
MARENGO, Ill. (WGN) — Every small town has its dreamer, and along the quiet farm-lined roads of Marengo, Illinois, that dreamer is Mike Kellner. For 40 years, he has been working away in a barn to bring a ghost back to life. The ghost is a 75-foot-long, gleaming aluminum WWII warbird known as the B-17. 'It's a piece of history and I would like to have the opportunity to fly it,' Kellner said. The fact that it's here in his barn is just about as unbelievable as the story of how it came to be. The plane was found in a junkyard in Maine in 1984. It was listed as 'Old Bomber. $7,000 or best offer.' More on Kellner's project on his Facebook page 'We took an old house trailer, took the house off of it, added 10 feet on it and pulled it with a pickup truck,' Kellner said. It took five trips and 39 more years to piece her back, panel by panel, rivet by rivet. The B-17—a nostalgic vessel of the past. 'We found a bunch of dental record in one of the spar tubes cause this was being used as a litter carrier,' Kellner said. 'In the horizontals there were two women wrote their names, address and phone number.' Word spread about Kellner's barn project and folks started to show up, including a retired airplane mechanic whose uncle manned a turret and a relative who was a P.O.W. in Germany. They came with stories, tools, time and reverence. An estimated 50,000 U.S. airman were lost or missing in action on B-17 missions—with many more wounded. But even when the donation jar is long dried up and the hunt for parts elusive, Kellner continues on—piecing the plane back together so one day, she can tip her wings to the sky, and to the stories that ended up in the clouds. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Bloomberg
24-03-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Czech Billionaire Kretinsky Gains Full Control in Germany's LEAG
Czech industrial tycoon Daniel Kretinsky has gained full ownership of a major operator of coal mines and power plants in Germany after buying a stake from the billionaire Kellner family. EP Energy Transition, a unit of Kretinsky's EP Group, has acquired the remaining 30% in LEAG from the Kellners' PPF Group NV for an undisclosed price, according to statements from both parties.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Golden Ticket fundraiser underway to benefit schools and local businesses
FOREST HILLS, Queens (PIX11) — Do you want to win a Golden Ticket to tour a chocolate factory? It's not the plot of a movie, but an actual fundraiser currently underway in Forest Hills, Queens. More: Latest News from Around the Tri-State Aigner Chocolates on Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens is selling 'community bars' to benefit schools and local businesses. Owner Rachel Kellner tells PIX11 News, 'Anyone can come to the store and purchase a community bar for 6 dollars. 40 to 50 percent of those sales are going to Adopt A Classroom and Teach for America.' Five of the bars will contain the Golden Ticket, which will allow you to be a Chocolatier for a day at Aigner's. Of course, you'll get to sample the treats when you're done making them. Kellner adds, 'Maybe they'll learn the Snozzberry recipe!' Kellner said, 'We're ready to continue to give back to the community, to continue to help build relationships between schools and businesses.' Free chicken sandwich giveaway in Queens: When and where The contest will last for a month at Aigner Chocolates. At least five public schools in Queens have already signed up to use the candy bars to fundraise for extra money for the classrooms. Co-president of the Parents' Association at P.S. 109Q, Caroline You tells PIX11 News, 'A large portion of the sales is going to go back to the schools so we can definitely use that money to help support the curriculum and other things for the students.' P.A. Co-president Melissa San Pedro said the money allows a number of extras, like 'local theater groups come in and teach the kids to sing, local science-based engineering companies, and they teach the kids robotics, so it just supports what they learned in school.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBC
18-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Alberta study shows 'reassuring' trends in childhood hospitalization patterns post-pandemic
A new University of Calgary study shows that while hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses among Alberta children surged after pandemic-related measures were lifted, there has since been a return to more typical levels. The study, published in the Lancet Regional Health - Americas, analyzed 52,839 pediatric hospitalizations for the most common causes of acute respiratory disease — including bronchiolitis (mostly caused by RSV), influenza-like illness, pneumonia, COVID-19, croup and asthma — over a 14-year period ending on Aug. 31, 2024. "This is a story that's unfolded in chapters, from before COVID to during COVID, and now we've had the chance to look at … a couple of years after the peak of the pandemic," said Dr. Jim Kellner, the lead author and pediatric infectious diseases specialist with the University of Calgary. Researchers tracked hospitalizations at Alberta Children's Hospital, Stollery Children's Hospital and all 95 other Alberta facilities that admit kids and they were able to quantify the dramatic swings that made headlines over a number of years. They found typical patterns were disrupted — and there was a "significant decline" in pediatric hospital and intensive care unit admissions for these respiratory conditions — early during the pandemic when public health measures, including masking and school closures, were in place. Hospitalizations dropped by 91 per cent during the winter of 2020-21. This was followed by a dramatic jump during the 2022-23 respiratory virus season, with the incidence of hospitalization surging to 48 per cent above average pre-pandemic levels. Bronchiolotis, which is often triggered by RSV, was the key driver of this surge, the study showed. That respiratory virus season, which came after public health measures were lifted, was dubbed the "triple-demic" as hospitals were overwhelmed with children who were sick with RSV, influenza and COVID-19. Hospitalizations dropped "There were concerns that if children weren't exposed to mild forms of these infections — that they would have to be exposed to sometime — that somehow it would affect individual children and their immunity in a way that could be causing long-term problems," said Kellner, who also works at Alberta Children's Hospital. There were also worries there would be permanent changes to the seasonal patterns of infections that would make them more unpredictable and harder to plan for and manage in the health system, according to Kellner. But by the winter of 2023-24, the researchers found hospitalizations and ICU admissions for acute respiratory disease among children returned to expected pre-pandemic levels. "We've seen a return to more or less how things were before, which was different than what people were expecting," he said, noting more research is needed to watch the ongoing trends. Kellner said the average age of admitted children (normally the very young) didn't increase compared to pre-COVID years, and the proportion of kids who got very sick was similar to previous levels. The findings suggest any increase in susceptibility to infections — among individual children or in the population at large — related to pandemic measures "may have largely resolved by the winter of 2023-24," the authors wrote. "[The study] is a nice addition to the scientific literature to help us understand partly what happened during these tumultuous years," said Dr. Jesse Papenburg, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Montreal Children's Hospital and McGill University, who wasn't involved in the study. He noted researchers identified cases based on the symptoms children presented to hospital with, rather than analyzing positive test results. That, he said, provides a more complete picture because the findings are not impacted by the availability of testing. "It is reassuring that we returned to a kind of normalicy or typical respiratory season both in terms of timing and the number of cases we saw. And also didn't see big shifts in the age distribution either in this study," said Papenburg. "[With] the interventions that we did to try and curb the spread of COVID-19, there's no evidence there was any sort of longer term harm or disruption in our wintertime respiratory infections that would have caused some sort of prolonged burden." Papenburg said the data also underscores the true burden of illnesses such as RSV and influenza among children. And he believes it highlights the need to ensure a new injection to protect babies from RSV is made available in provinces such as Alberta, and to increase flu vaccination rates. Meanwhile, Kellner said the study should help with health system planning because it illustrates the large seasonal peaks — and demand during the fall and winter seasons — that hospitals can expect.
