A closer look
Robert Timm and John Cook flew a modified Cessna 172 continuously for sixty-four days, twenty-two hours, and nineteen minutes in 1958 without ever letting the landing gear touch the ground. Funded by the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas as a chaotic promotional stunt, the pilots refueled by flying terrifyingly close to a speeding truck on a highway and hoisting up a fuel hose. They stayed in the air for over two months, sleeping on a tiny foam mattress and bathing from a sink while slowly losing their minds in a cramped, noisy metal tube. We currently complain about spending a six-hour cross-country flight without decent Wi-Fi, while these absolute madmen subjected themselves to solitary confinement in the sky just to advertise a casino, setting an aviation endurance record that stands to this day because modern humans are thankfully less desperate for attention






