On May 22, 1936, the German Zeppelin the "Hindenburg" altered the course of her regular flight from the United States to Frankfurt and crossed Lancashire and Yorkshire via Barrow-in-Furness, Skipton, Keighley, Leeds and Thorne.

She appeared over Keighley that evening, providing an unexpected spectacle which everybody who saw her remembers to this day.

One of her passengers, Father Schulte "the flying priest", dropped a small crucifix and some flowers for the grave, in Morton Cemetery, of his brother and other German prisoners-of-war who had died locally in the 1919 influenza epidemic; though with the benefit of hindsight it is likely that the "Hindenburg" was in fact spying on the industrial North.

Mr Paul Murgatroyd has provided this snapshot taken by his grandfather, Joseph H K Hanson, showing the "Hindenburg" as seen from Hospital Road at Riddlesden.

However, at 804 feet long the biggest airship ever built, the "Hindenburg" was not necessarily always as close as she seemed.