August 20, 2006

A Tall Drink of Water

The ever-surprising Steve Sailer blogs on the tallest famous people outside of basketball and came up with Leka of Albania, pretender to the Albania throne, son of the late King Zog, who is depicted above.
Zog was the target of no less than 600 blood feuds. Leka, in the Balkan tradition, goes about armed, and has fought off kidnappers from the door of his airplane.

Leka has also tried to take over Albania a couple of times, and lives in Tirana:
Back in 1967, Jerry, Stefan Possony, and then-Crown Prince in Exile Leka (or Laika) organized an invasion of Albania by exiles to overthrow Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. King Hussein of Jordan agreed to provide air cover to wipe out the small Albanian air force to allow the invaders to cross the channel from Corfu, where they were training in the King Constantine of Greece's palace. Jerry spent a lot of time in Jordan training their pilots on how to pull off a sneak attack and wipe out the Albanian planes on the ground. Then, in June 1967, the Israelis pulled off their own sneak attack and wiped out the Jordanian air force on the ground, so the liberation of Albania had to be called off.

Decades later, Jerry met the President of Israel, Ezer Weizman, who had been in charge of the Israeli Air Force in 1967. Jerry explained how Weizman had wrecked his invasion of Albania. Weizman exclaimed to the effect that You were that foreigner who was training the Jordanians how to pull of a sneak attack? We thought you were a Russian training the Jordanians to attack us!
His son, also named Leka, among other things, appears to be a tall drink of water as well.

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