Why I wish I were a physicist in the early 1900s

So I've been reading this mammoth of a book by Richard Rhodes called The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Here is an excerpt I particularly enjoyed:

The British flew their diplomatic pouch [58-year-old Nobel laureate Niels Bohr] back and forth from Stockholm in an unarmed two-engine Mosquito bomber, a light, fast aircraft that could fly high enough to avoid the German anti-aircraft batteries on the west coast of Norway - flak usually topped out at 20,000 feet. The Mosquito's bomb bay was fitted for a single passenger. On October 6 Bohr donned a flight suit and strapped on a parachute. The pilot supplied him with a flight helmet with built-in earphones for communication with the cockpit and showed him the location of his oxygen hookup. Bohr also took delivery of a stick of flares. In case of attack the pilot would dump the bomb bay and Bohr would parachute into the cold North Sea; the flares would aid his rescue if he survived...

The Mosquito flew at a great height and it was necessary to use oxygen masks; the pilot gave word on the inter-com when the supply of oxygen should be turned on, but as the helmet with the earphones did not fit [Bohr's] head, he did not hear the order and soon fainted because of lack of oxygen. The pilot realized that something was wrong when he received no answer to his inquiries, and as soon as they had passed over Norway he came down and flew low over the North Sea. When the plane landed in Scotland, [Bohr] was conscious again.