All Stories

In addition to the feats accomplished while in a plane, Earhart made an impact in areas from ranging from fashion to flying an autogiro. 

When World War II broke out, hundreds of women took to the skies in support of the war effort. 

On May 18, 1953, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound and, at the time of her death in 1980, she held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other male or female pilot in aviation history. 

Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman to earn her pilot's license. Take a closer look at her training.

Wally Funk is finally going to space. After being the youngest of the female pilots tested by Dr. Lovelace, Funk will become the oldest person to fly into space at age 82.

What do archivists do when they’re not in the archives? Last summer, in addition to making digital collections available to researchers all over the world, National Air and Space Museum archivists Elizabeth Borja and Melissa Keiser experimented with historical recipes found in the Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Collection.

June 19, 1865, Texas—A Union Army General, Gordon Granger informed the enslaved African Americans of Texas of their freedom. June 19, 1925—A young Black woman climbed into her aircraft and took to the skies in Houston, Texas. White and Black audiences, separated by different seating arrangements, cheered in unison. Reflect on the significance of both of these events and what it means today.

Coleman was the first African American woman to earn a pilot's license, facing racist and sexist obstacles in the process.

Pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman's life and legacy aren’t just limited to aviation. In the air and on the ground, she made history.

Astronomers at Harvard’s central observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its new observatory in Arequipa, Peru, ultimately produced over 500,000 glass plate images of the night sky. Directors of the Harvard College Observatory hired women to study, organize, and care for its immense glass plate collection in Cambridge.