As mentioned at Early Modern Notes, it's Archive Awareness ... something ... in the UK. Lots of events showcasing different archives and themes. There's even a nice aviation-related image on their front page (though it's not obvious what archive it's from, the RAF Museum perhaps).

It's an advertisement for the first official British air mail service,And not forgetting the Grand Aerial Gymnkhana and Military Tournament the following Saturday! from London Aerodrome (Hendon) to Windsor, which was flown on 9 September 1911 by Gustav Hamel. He was the only one of the four pilots who attempted the 21 mile distance to actually make it; a pilot was killed in one of the later flights. The point was to commemorate the coronation of George V, but they were a bit slow off the mark: that happened in June! There's more information, and many pictures, at the Royal Windsor Website and at Aeroplanes!

Hendon became a very popular entertainment venue in the years just prior to the First World War; many people from all social classes would have gained their first exposure to aeroplanes there.That the airmail flight was scheduled on a Saturday afternoon suggests that workers (and their families) were part of the intended audience - that's when many of them had a half-day holiday. A useful account of Hendon's growth is given in chapter 6 of Andrew Horrall, Popular Culture in London, c.1890-1918: The Transformation of Entertainment (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://airminded.org/copyright/.