Stories of daring, stories of technological feats, stories of prevailing against the odds ... these are the stories we tell at the National Air and Space Museum. Dive in to the stories below to discover, learn, and be inspired. 

Showing 111 - 120 of 673

August 23, 2022 By Air or Rail? Why Not Both! Story

In 1929, Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) started passenger service between New York and Los Angeles using a combination of trains and planes.

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August 11, 2022 AirSpace Season 6, Ep. 7: Look at the Sky Story | AirSpace Podcast

Skywriting is something you might witness at the beach, or a sporting event, or an outdoor concert. A popular form of aerial advertising and even the occasional marriage proposal, skywritten messages can have a BIG impact (and with letters approximately 1500 feet tall… we mean that quite literally).  But maybe you didn’t know that it originated with the military and dates wayyy back to the early days of aviation in 1910. This episode will be your exhaustive look into everything you’d want to know about skywriting – how it works, who does it, the most popular examples, and even its code of conduct. And to learn all about it, we speak to a skywriting pilot whose family has been in the business since nearly the beginning.

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August 04, 2022 Northrop P-61 Black Widow: First American Airplane Designed and Built to Fight at Night, Part I Story

Getting all the components of a complex aircraft to fit and function satisfactorily required more than a year of careful design work, however on January 30, 1942, the Army Air Corps awarded Northrop a contract to build two XP-61 prototypes. Rediscover the Black Widow on the 80th anniversary year of its first flight.

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July 26, 2022 Operation Migration Story

Canadians Bill Lishman and Joe Duff founded Operation Migration in 1994 to teach captive-reared birds to migrate by following the Cosmos Phase II ultralight aircraft.

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July 25, 2022 The Age of the Bizjet Story

Corporations around the world depend on airplanes.

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July 18, 2022 Roscoe Turner and Gilmore the Flying Lion Story

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a...lion?

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June 30, 2022 Five Connections Between the Need for Speed in the Air and on the Ground Story

Speed on the ground and in the air may have more connections than you think.

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June 29, 2022 The Fastest Man on Earth Story

Learn about Glen Curtiss—who was at one time known as the fastest man on Earth.

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June 24, 2022 1947: Year of the Flying Saucer Story

What Kenneth Arnold saw while flying past Mt. Rainier on June 24, 1947, remains a mystery. He spent the rest of his life trying to explain it and inadvertently added the words “flying saucer” to the vocabularies of millions of people around the world. Learn about the story behind it.

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June 23, 2022 The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk Story

Kitty Hawk, NC—where the Wrights made their world changing flights. 

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