Aviation
History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More
For thousands of years, humans have dreamed of taking to the skies. The quest has led from kite flying in ancient China to hydrogen-powered hot-air balloons in 18th-century France to contemporary aircraft so sophisticated they can’t be detected by radar or the human eye. Below ...read more
How America's Aviation Industry Got Its Start Transporting Mail
The U.S. aviation industry took off in the early 20th century not by transporting people, but by moving America’s mail. At first, airmail pilots flew in flimsy open-cockpit planes through every kind of weather—an experience that ranged from frequently harrowing to sometimes ...read more
On 9/11, Heather Penney Tried to Bring Down Flight 93
September 11, 2001 was supposed to be a typical day for Lieutenant Heather Penney of the District of Columbia Air National Guard. As Penney recalled in a 2016 interview with HISTORY, that morning she was attending a briefing at Andrews Air Force Base, planning the month’s ...read more
What Happened to Amelia Earhart?
On the morning of July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from Lae, New Guinea, on one of the last legs in their historic attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Their next destination was Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean, some 2,500 miles ...read more
The First Nonstop Flight Across the Atlantic Lasted 16 Harrowing Hours
When it was all over, Captain John Alcock, an English pilot, telegraphed his story to newspaper reporters around the world. He was exhausted by a recent in-air ordeal that had culminated in a risky plane crash in Ireland along with his navigator and flying partner, Arthur Whitten ...read more
Automation of Planes Began 9 Years After the Wright Bros Took Flight—But It Still Leads to Baffling Disasters
The first successful airplane pilot, Wilbur Wright, flew his 1903 craft by lying on his stomach, pushing and pulling levers as the wind swept over his head. Since then, piloting a plane has become a lot less physical thanks to automation and autopilot functions that do a lot of ...read more
How a Murderer from Italy Remade Himself as an American Renaissance Man
In retrospect, it seems odd that Henry Woodhouse got away with as much as he did for more than half a century. After all, it wasn’t every day that a paroled murderer with no discernible education became a darling of America’s burgeoning aviation elite—heralded as a renowned ...read more
7 Female Adventurers Who Broke All the Rules
Since the beginning of recorded history, bold women have been casting off the shackles of conventional life and traveling land, sea and sky to explore the world. Read on to discover the stories of seven of these courageous women—who ruled empires, discovered lost cities and ...read more
Snapshots of Amelia Earhart’s Legendary Life
1. First woman to make a transatlantic flight In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Luis Gordon. With this feat she gained international attention, providing an opportunity for her to become a ...read more
Who was the first president to fly on Air Force One?
While it’s become synonymous with the blue and white jetliner stamped with the words “United States of America,” Air Force One is actually a call sign applied to any aircraft carrying the American president. The name was created following an incident in 1953, when President ...read more
History Faceoff: Who Was First in Flight?
The Case for Alberto Santos-DumontTens of millions of people around the world received their first introduction to Alberto Santos-Dumont when they tuned into the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and watched as a nattily attired, mustachioed man ...read more
How the Tuskegee Airmen Became Pioneers of Black Military Aviation
On March 19, 1941, the U.S. War Department established the 99th Pursuit Squadron, which, along with a few other squadrons formed later, became better known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Consisting of America’s first Black military pilots, these units confronted racism at home in ...read more
6 Little-Known Pioneers of Aviation
1. Sir George Cayley The dream of manned flight dates back to the ancient world, but a true understanding of aerodynamic principles and practical aircraft design didn’t arrive until the work of the English polymath George Cayley. In 1799, the man known as the “Father of ...read more
The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19
It began as nothing more than a routine training flight. At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from a Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The planes—collectively known as “Flight 19”—were scheduled to tackle a three-hour exercise ...read more
Amelia Earhart’s Navigator: The Life and Loss of Fred Noonan
Fred Noonan has been consigned to a historical footnote as Amelia Earhart‘s navigator. That’s partly because little is known about him. When he and Earhart vanished on July 2, 1937, headlines blared about the disappearance of “Lady Lindy” and the frantic search for her Lockheed ...read more
Wright Brothers
Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors and pioneers of aviation. In 1903 the Wright brothers achieved one of the first flights with a powered, sustained and controlled airplane; they surpassed their own milestone two years later when they built and flew the first ...read more