PLANES: Doris Galentine of Port Allegany may have an interesting connection to a veteran we featured in our column the Monday after Veterans Day.

She was reading about James Edwin Heasley of Marshburg, who became a navigator on a B24 Bomber with the 8th Army Air Corps during World War II. For a time, James was stationed at Grafton Underwood Royal Air Force, just outside Kettering, England.

Doris tells us, “I lived in England, born there. I lived in Northampton, not far from Kettering during World War II. When we went to bed at nights, we would listen to the planes going over. We would count them, then in the morning as the planes returned, we would sometimes count them.

“I don’t know, but maybe he could have been in one of those planes,” she tells us. Doris added, “As we grew up, we used to visit Kettering and the park there.

“Reading Round the Square brought back memories of the war.”

Small world.

NOVEMBER 21: We can always count on Clayton Vecellio for historical tidbits.

The Lewis Run residents writes, “On 11-21-1871, the first cigar lighter was patented by M.F. Gale of New York City.”

He noted that M.F. Gale’s patent is #121-049.

We wonder how similar that lighter patent was to the lighter designed by George G. Blaisdell in 1932 Bradford.

Clayton added that also on this day in history…the national Prohibition law was enacted in 1918, and Harry S. Truman was the first president to travel underwater in a captured enemy submarine at Key West, Fla., in 1946.

The 21st Amendment ending Prohibition was ratified on Dec. 5, 1933.