Nhà thám hiểm nổi tiếng, đứa con bị ám ảnh và sự trở lại của lá cờ số 98

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To anyone in America in the 1930s and the decades that followed, Adm. Richard E. Byrd’s name was attached to the extreme limits of human exploration in the uncharted Antarctic. His exploits to the so-called White Continent played out in breathless newspaper coverage in real time: “Byrd, in Isolation, Reports Blizzard.” New York City threw him not one, not two, but three ticker-tape parades.

He was a prominent fixture at the Explorers Club, a New York City institution dating (tổ chức hẹn hò) back to the early 1900s. Its members have visited the earth’s poles and peaks, from the summit of Mount Everest to the ocean’s deepest points, in the Mariana Trench. And they carried with them the club’s cherished flags, with the E and C logo. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he carried a club flag tucked in his spacesuit’s sleeve pocket (túi tay áo).

Following Commander Byrd’s death, for years thereafter, his scattered storage spaces surfaced (không gian lưu trữ rải rác nổi lên), revealing their treasures (kho báu). Someone’s aging father would die, and the children, cleaning out the basement (tầng hầm) or garage, would discover boxes of items that once had belonged (thuộc về) to Admiral Byrd.

As it happens, Mr. Rioux had met the client’s father years earlier and clearly recalled the man telling him that he had recently purchased a batch (mua một lô) of Byrd items, including the flag.

source: nytimes,