All Stories

Astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt lived a short but deeply impactful life, during which her achievements failed to receive sufficient recognition. On the centennial of her death, we reflect on her life and legacy.

Flight attendants were some of the people at the forefront of the fight for equality in the 20th century. Meet some of these remarkable people in this article. 

In the early days of commercial air flight, airlines struggled to turn a profit and remain afloat. The United States government, hoping to foster the success of commercial airlines, met this challenge by using airplanes to move mail across the country.

At AirSpace we absolutely LOVE spotlighting stories about incredible aviators who might not already be on your radar. Today, we’re introducing you to the Chinese aviatrix Li Xiaqing: A literal movie star who learned to fly with the aspiration of serving her country. Li’s story is not only inspiring, it’s practically a screenplay waiting to be written. Born in 1911 into a rapidly changing China, she took flying lessons in Switzerland and the United States before returning to China in the 1930s. Despite being grounded by her home country during the war, she still found a way to use her skills in the war effort barnstorming across the US raising money for China. An actress, aviatrix, and altruist? Now, that’s a true triple threat.

One area in which commercial airlines were able to make a splash and successfully market themselves during the 1960s and 1970s was through what their flight attendants wore. To appeal to the mostly male travelers, airlines introduced miniskirts and hot pants, to the dismay of many flight attendants.

Glenn Lane told his incredible survival story to former Museum curator Jim Zimbelman who met him at and an airport by chance in 2007—he was returning from a reunion event at Pearl Harbor with a jacket that displayed the words 'USS Arizona Survivor.’ Read about the man that survived two battleships bombings in less than one hour.

Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, in 1915 to supervise and direct American aeronautical research. Spurred by Smithsonian Secretary Charles D. Walcott, the NACA soon became the nation's preeminent aeronautical research organization and attracted some of the nation's most creative engineers. 

Jackie Cochran’s record-setting T-38 Talon is now on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Discover the relationship shared between these two aviation icons.

NASA is usually associated with spaceflight, but its first "A" stands for Aeronautics. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Dr. Richard T. Whitcomb of NASA led the development of several key technologies: area rule in the 1950s and '60s, supercritical wings in the 1970s, and winglets in the 1970s and '80s.

In the era of the Space Shuttle from the 1980s to the early 2010s, NASA astronauts would receive numerous information booklets and other written materials which would explain to them how to operate the Space Shuttle. The Museum's Archives holds two rich collections related to this intense technical training in the personal papers of Sally K. Ride and David M. Brown.