The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Salina, Kan. - American adventurer Steve Fossett landed safely in Kansas Thursday afternoon, becoming the first person to fly solo around the world without stopping or refuelling. "That was something I've wanted to do for a long time," Fossett said after climbing out of the cramped 2.1-metre cockpit of the custom-made GlobalFlyer. "It was a major ambition." The journey of 37,000 kilometres took 67 hours, many of them fraught with anxiety over whether the aircraft had enough fuel for the trip. The 60-year-old millionaire adventurer stayed awake for almost all of the trip, taking only brief catnaps in the jet funded by Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson. Vatican City - Pope John Paul II's condition is "progressively improving" but doctors haven't yet set a date for the frail pontiff to leave the hospital, the Vatican says. The 84-year-old Pope wants to leave Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic hospital, where he underwent an emergency tracheotomy on Feb. 24, but is accepting doctors' advice not to rush back to the Vatican. Beijing - Dynamite stored illegally at a coal mine manager's house in China's northern Shanxi province blew up, killing him and at least 10 others, news reports said Thursday. A police officer in the town, Kecheng, told the Associated Press that the mine manager and several of his family members were killed.
