Heroes April 21

April 21 is a day for heroes. Today’s heroes seem to comprise mostly overpaid sports players and television ‘personalities’ but it was not always thus. In 753 BC for example Romulus founded Rome. On April 21, 753 BC Romulus and his brother Remus started to build a settlement on the Palatine Hill, which was destined to become Rome. For some unrecorded and inexplicable reason, Remus jumped from the unfinished city wall, which was, apparently, an omen of ill fortune, so Romulus (instinctively, the history says) killed him. Remorsefully Romulus then named the city Roma, (why not Rema?) and made himself King. Now there’s someone to look up to - eat your heart out Beckham. Brazil has a hero who was a dentist. His name was Tiradentes and he was part of the Brazilian seditious movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira. Tiradentes wanted to found a republic with its capital at São João del Rei and to create a university. but the plot was betrayed and Tiradentes and 11 others were sentenced to death in 1792. In 1889 the anniversary of his death the 21 April, became a national holiday. Finally, the most famous hero of them all, Baron Manfred Albrecht von Richthofen, the "ace of aces" who won 80 air combats during World War I was killed on 21 April 1918. Von Richthofen was shot down and killed over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme River whilst pursuing a Sopwith Camel piloted by a Canadian, Lieutenant Wilfrid "Wop" May of No. 209 Squadron, Royal Air Force. In turn the baron was chased by a plane piloted by a schoolfriend of May, Captain Arthur "Roy" Brown, he was then caught by a bullet, shot from behind and below, passing diagonally through his chest. Von Richthofen’s plane came to rest in a field on a hill near the Bray-Corbie road just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme before he died, von Richthofen pointed to his plane and moaned, "Kaputt.". Even Jeremy Paxman would have a job to ‘out-comment’ that.