5th
edition
Elementary
Video scripts
Headway 5
th
edition
Photocopiable © Oxford University Press 2019
Page
21
of
41
I was born on 11 January 1976. I think that was the year that Concorde started flying. My dad flew to New York on
Concorde once, and he talked about it a lot. I remember there was a horrible crash in Paris about twenty years ago,
and Concorde stopped flying after that. I saw one in a museum recently. It was an amazing plane!
Concorde
In 1969, British and French engineers flew an early model of the supersonic passenger jet Concorde.
People were amazed by this beautiful new plane that could fly at over 2,000 kilometres an hour.
In 1976, fourteen Concorde planes were ready for passengers. They flew from London and Paris to New York. The
journey only took three hours.
But the tickets were very expensive. A lot of people didn’t like the plane because it was very noisy.
Concorde
flew for nearly thirty years, and its last flight was in 2003. Today the journey from London to
New York by
plane takes seven hours!
Part 3: The 1980s
Do you know what happened in the world the year you were born?
I was born on May 7, 1981. That was the year that Charles and Diana got married. My parents have photos of me as
a baby at a street party for the wedding. It was a fairy-tale story, with a really sad ending. I remember when Princess
Diana died in 1997, I was still at school. It was really sad.
A royal wedding
On 24 February 1981, 32-year-old Prince Charles and 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer announced that they were
getting married.