Above and Below

The chusan palm or Chinese windmill palm in the garden is starting to flower and inside there is a mass of these large, yellow, branched panicles (I looked that one up). I thought this one looked a bit like a lung. This got me thinking about Jacques-Yves Cousteau, co-inventor of the aqua-lung. Cousteau joined the French Naval Academy in 1930 with the ambition of becoming a pilot. A serious car crash thwarted these plans and a fellow officer introduced him to the undersea world. Cousteau was hooked. By necessity, to go deeper and stay under water longer, he went on to produce and develop the first aqua-lung with engineer Emile Gagnan. Cousteau's subsequent adventures to bring to a wider audience the wonder of the undersea world were only made possible by this invention. Today, scuba diving is a popular recreation around the world. SCUBA is an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.