THIS column's entirely accidental contribution to the honouring of balloonist Richard Crosbie (see news report, Monday) reminds me Frank McNally of a much more famous misadventure involving an Irish airman, the 70th anniversary of which passed quietly in July.
"Irish" is stretching it in the case of Douglas Corrigan, who was born in Texas. But Ireland was his ancestral homeland, as well as the destination of his historic flight, and the subsequent film about his life was called The Flying Irishman, which is good enough for me.
"Misadventure" is more of a stretch, in fact, because there was almost certainly nothing accidental about the Atlantic crossing that made him famous. He always claimed it was a mistake, however. And so doing, he gave his name to the language.
Thereafter, any American who did something in reverse - such as a concussed gridiron player running for his own line - would be dubbed a "Wrong-way Corrigan".
Charming as it is, the story that Corrigan took off from New York bound for California but took a wrong turn and ended up in Ireland is undermined by certain known facts - chief among them that he had spent the previous three years seeking permission to fly to Europe and being refused.
His obsession began when he worked on the original Ryanair - a plane built by his then employer, Californian aircraft manufacturer T.C. Ryan - which, as The Spirit of St Louis, made the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1927.
Unfortunately, the old banger Corrigan bought for his attempt to emulate Charles Lindbergh was never deemed fit by the authorities for an ocean crossing. Even after repeated repairs, it was certified only for overland use.
And its pilot was ostensibly returning overland to California when given permission to take off from an airfield in Brooklyn on July 17th, 1938. However, as it was foggy and there were buildings to the west of the field, he was advised to take off in any direction except west. So he headed east, and kept going.
In his own version, he noticed the mistake 26 hours later after descending from clouds and seeing a large mass of water that could not be the Pacific. Whereupon he checked the compass and realised - now the light had improved - that he had been watching the wrong end of the needle. It was, of course, too late to turn back. So, two hours afterwards, he landed at Baldonnel Airport.
His "mistake" cost him a brief suspension of his pilot's licence - the equivalent of a jockey being stood down for a few days because of careless riding.
But the questions of suspicious airline officials had been cut short with the comment: "That's my story". This also became the title of his biography. And despite rumours that he would come clean eventually, Corrigan was still sticking to his original explanation when he died in 1995.
It was an understandable decision. Although solo flights across the Atlantic remained unusual in 1938 - and required a lot of courage, especially in a plane partly held together with baling twine - it was the story that set him apart.
The New York Postgreeted his return (by ship) from Ireland with a banner front-page headline, "Hail to Wrong-Way Corrigan", printed backwards. And his ticker-tape parade down Broadway attracted bigger crowds than Lindbergh's.
His popularity may have been down to timing. The mixture of heroism and humour in Corrigan's story made him a particular hero in an America still in the grip of the Great Depression. The US may need his likes again soon.
LAST week I mentioned Leitrim's new Anthony Trollope Trail, commemorating a man who - a bit like Wrong-way Corrigan - reversed the usual literary tradition by emigrating from London to Ireland to make his name.
On a not dissimilar theme, a group of book-lovers will gather in Clonmel library this morning to talk about another 19th-century English author whom Ireland helped make. George Borrow was born in Norfolk. But he crossed the Irish Sea in 1815 with his military father; and here, for a time at least, he went native.
His life-changing experiences included a breathless gallop around the Devil's Bit in Tipperary, during which he fell in love with horses, a passion that lasted all his life. He fell for the Irish language too, later crediting it with helping him become multilingual.
But his potential as a poster boy for Bord na nGaeilge is probably diminished by the fact that his urge to speak Irish fitted with a self-confessed liking for excitement and bad company.
As he explained: "It was not a school language, to acquire which was considered an imperative duty; no, no; nor was it a drawing-room language, drawled out occasionally, in shreds and patches, by the ladies of generals and other great dignitaries, to the ineffable dismay of poor officers' wives. Nothing of the kind; but a speech spoken in out-of-the-way desolate places, and in cut-throat kens, where thirty ruffians, at the sight of the king's minions, would spring up with brandished sticks. . ."
Oxford-based Martin Murphy, one of 20 members of the George Borrow Society meeting for today's event, regrets that "in the pantheon of writers associated with Clonmel, Borrow has been rather eclipsed by Sterne and Trollope". Perhaps this is about to change. Fans of the novelist call themselves "Borrovians" rather than "Borrowers" - which, in current market conditions, seems wise. Even so, considering the global downturn, Borrow could be a writer whose time has again come.