All Stories

I knew Neil Armstrong, not all that well, but for a very long time.

We will all miss him, not just because he was the first human being in the history of the world to set foot on another body in the solar system, but perhaps especially because of the honor and dignity with which he lived his life as that first Moon walker.

Astronaut Alan “Dex” Poindexter joined fellow Space Shuttle commanders and crewmembers at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center recently to welcome Discovery to its new home in the Smithsonian. Poindexter commanded the next-to-last Discovery mission, STS-131, in 2010. He also served as pilot on Atlantis for the STS-122 mission in 2008. Both shuttle crews delivered equipment for construction of the International Space Station. Poindexter joined the astronaut corps in 1998 in the midst of a distinguished career as a naval aviator, first as a fighter pilot, then as a test pilot. He served two deployments in the Arabian Gulf during operations Desert Storm and Southern Watch in the early 1990s.

Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. She remains a national icon of women’s achievement in science and space. 

This year is the 100^th Anniversary of the Girl Scouts, and on Saturday, June 9^th there will be an estimated 200,000 girls coming to Washington DC for the Girl Scouts Rock the Mall event.  There are many famous women, including First Ladies, a Supreme Court justice, CEOs, and even astronauts who remember their days in Girl Scouting as ones that helped shape their careers.  Most of us know that the Girl Scout organization was designed to empower girls and teach values as well as practical skills.  But did you know that at a time when most women and girls were being told the only job for them in aviation was that of stewardess, the Girl Scouts were offering a program to teach girls to fly airplanes?

It's July 26, 1909, and President William Howard Taft (left) has arrived in his superb White Motor Company Model M Steamer at Fort Myer, just across the Potomac from Washington, to watch the Wright brothers' preparations for the trial flight of their Military Flyer. On the following day, Orville Wright would make a record flight of over an hour, covering approximately 40 miles. Sitting next to the President is Senator Jonathan Bourne Jr. of Oregon. Taft's military aide and good friend, Captain Archibald Willingham Butt, is standing in the car. Born in Augusta, Georgia in 1865, Archie (as everyone called him) Butt began his career as a reporter, then served as first secretary to the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. In 1900, Archie received a commission in the U.S. Army. He served in the Philippines for four years, and as Depot Quartermaster in Washington D.C. he met President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.

The Friendship 7 space capsule was designed to orbit the earth and it did just that on February 20, 1962, with John Glenn, Jr. on board. It circled the globe three times before landing in the Atlantic Ocean. Three months later Friendship 7 began its second mission, or what was popularly referred to as its “fourth orbit:” a worldwide exhibition that was organized to promote and represent the United States and its space program in nearly 30 cities around the world.

I would like to think that I’ve always known the inspirational story of the Tuskegee Airmen—the groundbreaking pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group.

During the recently completed centennial of naval aviation (2011), there were many and varied tributes to the factual history of naval aviation. Nevertheless, we cannot forget that public perception of the armed forces is also a strong historical consideration.

When I was working on a collection of the aeronautical papers of Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906), the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I was struck by the wealth of detail in his research and the meticulousness of his note-taking. And as a man whose interests ranged from astronomy, astrophysics, aeronautics, and bird flight, mathematics, and the reckoning of standard time, Langley enjoyed observing and describing all sorts of processes — and then suggesting improvements.