The Space Race grew out of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the most powerful countries after World War II. For a half-century, the two superpowers competed for supremacy ...

Earhart’s Lockheed Electra was an extremely attractive aircraft at that time for distance flying, but it did not have the range for the South Pacific. To counteract this, Earhart was forced to plan a ...

Command Module Handbag Telling the story of the the Apollo 11 lunar landing includes some of the unique pieces of memorabilia created to mark that human achievement. In addition to the pins, patches, ...

The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age explores who Wilbur and Orville Wright were, what they achieved and how they did it, and how the world first reacted to their revolutionary ...

Who Flew? Flying was very expensive. Only business travelers and the wealthy could afford to fly. Most people still rode trains or buses for intercity travel because flying was so expensive. A ...

Veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Served in the infantry in World War II; flew two night combat tours in Korea in the F-94B (Lockheed Starfire) all-weather fighter and the RB-29A ...

Edinburgh Airport, Scotland, United Kingdom (EDI/EGPH) Originally a military airport, Edinburgh Airport opened to commercial aviation in 1977. It is now Scotland's second largest airport after Glasgow ...

Second, in addition to reviving the genre, Star Wars fundamentally changed how licensed toys and memorabilia were created and marketed. After Star Wars creator George Lucas initially had trouble ...

In the 1960s during the race to the Moon, the Soviets began to build hardware that in the 1970s became the world's first space station. On April 19, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first ...

U.S. Navy test pilot Alan Shepard joined the astronaut program in 1959. He became the first American and the second man in space on May 5, 1961, when he piloted the Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 on a ...

A century ago, the U.S. Navy commissioned the USS Langley —an ungainly new ship that would forever change military aviation. They’ve been called “Cities at Sea.” Crewed by as many as 5,000 sailors and ...

Not Yet a Moon Shot Before Kennedy’s call to send a man to the Moon, the early years of the Space Race marked successes through headline making “firsts”: the first satellite, the first man in space, ...