Aviation history

Fresh art (and history) at St. Louis Lambert Int’l Airport

Aviation history, ,

There’s a new glass mural at St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) honoring the life and legacy of airport founder Major Albert Bond Lambert.

Born in 1875, Albert Lambert was an avid balloonist and an accomplished golfer who competed in the 1900 and 1904 summer Olympics. And, lucky for us, he was also an aviation enthusiast who, after taking a ride in a plane piloted by Orville Wright, took flying lessons from the Wright Brothers’ company. In 1911, Lambert became the first licensed pilot in St. Louis.

In 1920, Lambert and the Missouri Aeronautical Society leased farmland to serve as an airfield for St. Louis. And it was Lambert, whose family owned the pharmaceutical company that made Listerine, who paid to have the land developed as an airfield. In 1925, when the lease ran out, Lambert purchased the airfield property. He sold it in 1928 to the city of St. Louis, at cost.

The new mural, “Dream Beyond the Clouds,” was designed by Martin Donlin. And in the video, below, Donlin describes the artistic inspiration for the mural design, the ‘making-of’ the mural, and what he learned about the airport’s namesake.

You’ll want to see the mural up close. Look for it in Terminal One, across from entry door 4.

Travel Tidbits: chocolate, aviation history, bonus miles for rides

Aviation history, Food, History, , , ,

Alaska Airlines + Seattle Chocolate: good match

We nibbled our way through the research for a story you’ll find on the Runway Way Girl Network about how Seattle Chocolate and Alaska Airlines worked together to develop an exclusive chocolate bar flavor for upper tier flyers as an in-flight perk. And how that bar is now available to the rest of us. Take a look.

An aviation site reboot

If you like aviation history and anything related to airlines, airplanes or airports then, like me, you’ll enjoy visiting the rebooted website called The Airchive, which I profiled for The Points Guy site. Take a look at that story here.

Bonus miles for vaccine access rides

Getting an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccination is hard enough. But many people also have a hard time getting to and from the vaccination centers. So it is nice to see Delta Air Lines offering some bonus miles as a reward for those who donate cash to make rides available. Details that offer here.

Airports celebrate Women’s History Month

Aviation history, , ,
Courtesy Museum of Flight

March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is International Women’s Day. Both present a great opportunity to celebrate and learn more about the accomplishments of women.

Here are a few tweets we spotted from airports and museums. Our favorite places.

Museum Monday: Amelia Earhart’s Goggles

Aviation history, , ,
Courtesy Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

Here’s proof that you never know when you’ll come across something cool in an unexpected place.

Case in point: the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. The sprawling museum is not just the largest children’s museum in the world. It is also home to more than 130,000 artifacts, many of them true treasures.

One example: these aviator goggles that belonged to Amelia Earhart. According to museum notes, Earhart “supposedly didn’t enjoy wearing goggles, and would only put them on at the end of the runway and would take them off as soon as she landed.” The museum says these goggles were given to Earhart by a friend who also gave her a leather jacket and a flight cap.

No word on what happened to the leather jacket and the flight cap. But the goggles are on display at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis right now as part of an exhibit called Barbie You Can Be Anything: The Experience. In addition to telling the story of the iconic doll, the exhibit highlights more than 200 careers Barbie has had over the years. Airline pilot is one of them.

Mattel’s Amelia Earhart Barbie doll and the museum’s Amelia Earhart goggles are part of the exhibit.

Barbie as Amelia Earhart

Travel Tidbits: an Astrochimp, airplane models, and more

Aviation history, , ,

It has been difficult – to say the least – to read anything but political news this week. But we did take a break and found these fun aviation-related treasures in our Twitter stream about anniversaries marking the death of Ham the Astrochimp and a record-breaking flight by Howard Hughes. The SFO Museum gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how it cares for airplane models and a fun early ad for a sleeperette compartment.