Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
November 7, 1924 The world airspeed record for seaplanes was decisively broken in the skies above southeastern Virginia. The pilot for this flight was Lieutenant Victor E. Bertrandias of the U.S. Army Air Service (USAAS). He was accompanied by USAAS Lieutenant George C. McDonald. Their flight began at 10:45 a.m. and it entailed traveling a... Continue Reading →
August 14, 1919 The U.S. Post Office Department, pushing the bounds of airmail and its applications further than ever before, conducted its first official delivery of mail via plane to a ship after it had already left port to sail across the ocean. This pioneering experiment took place when pilot Cyrus J. Zimmerman flew a... Continue Reading →
May 8, 1913 Two U.S. Navy aviators undertook a record-setting plane flight that began in Washington, D.C. These men were 28-year-old Lieutenant John Henry Towers, chief of the fledgling Naval Aviation Corps that was based at a camp near the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; and 24-year-old Ensign Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier, a student... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 