Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Not long after Najeeb Elias Halaby, Jr., stepped down as administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency (the present-day Federal Aviation Administration), various newspapers carried an Associated Press story about his just-released congressional testimony earlier in the year on a major aviation challenge. “Drunk Flying Among Private Pilots is Serious Problem,” proclaimed the headline in one... Continue Reading →
Eastern Airlines began its Eastern Airlines Shuttle service between LaGuardia Airport in New York and Washington, DC, and Boston. Initially, the service provided flights on Lockheed 1049 Super Constellation aircraft every two hours from 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. However, this soon proved to be inadequate to passenger demand, so the hours were extended to... Continue Reading →
Talk about an unexpected detour . . . Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, a scientist and inventor who also possessed a strong passion for travel via air balloons, found himself inadvertently flying smack into potential wartime intrigue and danger. Lowe, who was born in New Hampshire, in 1832, possessed a tremendous curiosity about the world around him... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. The Michigan-born pilot departed Dover, England, for Calais, France, in a monoplane that she had never flown before and with a compass she had just recently learned to use. Quimby, despite those challenges as well as thick fog that limited visibility... Continue Reading →
Varney Air Lines officially began service with a history-making U.S. airmail flight that originated in the city of Pasco, Washington. “America’s most modern and rapid transportation of mail was brought to the northwest today,” reported that day’s edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. Walter T. Varney, a pilot in the aviation section of the U.S.... Continue Reading →
Trailblazing aviator Elinor Smith died in Palo Alto, California, at the age of 98. She was born Elinor Regina Patricia Ward in 1911 in New York City. (She became Elinor Smith after her father, whose wide-ranging show business pursuits included singing and comedy, changed his name to Tom Smith.) Elinor Smith grew up in the... Continue Reading →
Mary Feik, whose career encompassed a wide range of aviation achievements, was born in Cleveland. Her interest in airborne transportation first took shape when she was only seven. A stunt pilot flying a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane visited the Cleveland area at that time and took Feik for a ride in the aircraft. The experience... Continue Reading →
Geraldyn “Jerrie” M. Cobb, a well-established female trailblazer of the skies, was born in Norman, Oklahoma. Her father was a pilot and, with his encouragement, she developed a strong interest in aviation at an early age. By the time she was 12, Cobb was learning how to fly in her father’s 1936 Waco Aircraft Company... Continue Reading →
Photo of Ellen Paneok courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program. Aviation pioneer Ellen Evak Paneok died in Anchorage, Alaska, at the age of 48. She had been born in 1959. (Accounts vary on whether her birthplace was in Alaska or Virginia.) Her parents were Bernice Evak Burgandine, who was of Inupiat... Continue Reading →
This post and others throughout African-American History Month will highlight notable African-Americans in transportation. African-American aviation pioneer James Herman Banning died during an air show at the U.S. Navy base in San Diego County, California. He was only 32. “The heroic young flyer was killed when a Travelair two-seater plane, in which he was a... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 