aviation

Hidden Treasures: Air & Space Museum and beyond

aviation, Aviation history, History, , ,

In my new book, Hidden Treasures: What Museum Can’t or Won’t Show You, I’ve included (of course) a few aviation-related items.

The folks at the Daily Planet, the Air & Space Museum’s blog, took notice and this week included a story about the book and the featured items from the museum’s collection.

They started with Katharine Wright’s knickers. The ones she likely wore beneath the lovely, white lace dress she chose to wear when she accompanied her brothers, Orville and Wilbur, to the White house to receive the Aero Club of America award. The dress and the knickers and a wide variety of other items relating to the history of women and aviation are at the International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ohio_Cleveland_WrightKnickers-333x500

The Daily Planet story also notes that Hidden Treasures features Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. It was designed to withstand the trip to the moon and back, but wasn’t expected to last longer than six months on earth – so is now kept in a cold vault at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia.

Neil Armstrong's spacesuit. Courtesy National Air & Space Museum

Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit. Courtesy National Air & Space Museum

Other aviation-related items you may want to read about:

The metal detector that screened terrorists at the Portland, Maine, airport on the morning of September 11, 2001. That’s on display at the TSA Museum at TSA headquarters in Washington, D.C., which is only accessible to employees and invited guests.

A metal detector which screened hijackers on the morning of September 11th.

A metal detector which screened hijackers on the morning of September 11th.

And the manual Colton Harris-Moore – the Barefoot Bandit- purchased (likely with a stolen credit card) to teach himself how to fly after stealing – and crashing – a small plane.

barefoot bandit

Here’s another link the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s blog post about the items and here’s another link to the book: Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Show You

The surprising home of Amelia Earhart’s flight jacket

aviation, Aviation history, History, Museums, , ,
Buffalo Bill

Courtesy Buffalo Bill Center of the West

I recently had the great pleasure of spending a day touring the five first-rate museums that make up the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Formerly the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the recently expanded center is home to the Cody Firearms Museum, The Plains Indian Museum, The Draper Natural History Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum and, my favorite, the Buffalo Bill Museum, which tells the story of the American West through both the private life of William F. Cody and his public life as the showman who created the pageant known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.

Buffalo bill poster

One of the great treats during my day at the museum with a few other journalists was going on a private tour with the curator of each museum and having a chance to see the back rooms.

And – lo and behold – when we went behind the scenes at the Buffalo Bill Museum with John Rumm, senior curator of American History and the curator of the museum, he showed us a box that contained Amelia Earhart’s leather flight jacket. This is the jacket Earhart is  seen wearing in a lot of photographs from the 1920s and 30s and which she likely wore on her historic flight across the Atlantic.

AmeliaEarhart-LeatherJacket

Light brown leather jacket owned and worn by Amelia Earhart on several of her historic flights. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, USA.

What’s that jacket doing in the collection of the Buffalo Bill Museum?

According to Rumm, Earhart and her husband, George Palmer Putnam, had bought property in Wyoming around 1934 from a friend of theirs, Carl Dunrud, and asked him to begin building a cabin on the site.

Then, in 1937, before heading out for that ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the world, Earhart began sending Dunrud some of her personal possessions for safekeeping. Included among those items was the flight jacket and a buffalo coat from the 1870s (below) given to her by the Western movie star William S. Hart.

AmeliaEarhart-BuffaloCoat

Rumm says for many years the buffalo coat was displayed and identified as having belonged to Buffalo Bill. But when Rumm took a close look at the records, he cleared up that mistake.

AmeliaRanchPhoto-OnFence

Amelia Earhart and Carl Dunrud at the Double D Ranch in northwest Wyoming, ca. 1935. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, USA.

 

Get ready for National Aviation Day

aviation, Aviation history, Holidays, ,

Monday, August 19, 2013 is both Orville Wright’s birthday and National Aviation Day and the place to celebrate will be the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

Wright Flyer Sculpture

Wright Flyer Sculpture – Courtesy NPS

Park fees will be waived all day and there will be a full schedule of events, including a special Junior Flight Ranger Program, talks about the Wright Brothers and their accomplishments, book signings, kite flying, paper airplane building and lots of other activities.

JFK T3 on list of America’s most endangered historic places

aviation, Aviation history, ,
JFK Terminal 3

JFK Terminal 3. Photo by Anthony Stramaglia

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has just issued its 2013 list of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places and the iconic, flying-saucer-shaped Terminal 3 at New York’s JFK International Airport – slated for demolition now that Delta Air Lines has moved over to Terminal 4 – is one of 11 sites on that list.

JFK T3

JFK T3 – The former Worldport – courtesy PANYNJ

 

Instead of demolishing Terminal 3- which opened in 1960 as the Worldport – the National Trust for Historic Preservation suggests demolishing just the south concourse instead and using the buiding as a connecting facility between T2 and T2 “as a dedicated or premier terminal or as an independent building open to the public containing a museum, restaurants, shops, aircraft observation space, airport employee daycare or other purposes.”

Here are the 10 other sites that made this year’s list. Find out more about each site here.

Abyssinian Meeting House, Portland, Maine .
Astrodome, Houston, Texas.
Chinatown House, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
Gay Head Lighthouse, Aquinnah, Mass .
Historic Rural Schoolhouses of Montana, Statewide .
James River, James City County, Va.
Kake Cannery, Kake, Alaska .
Mountain View Black Officers’ Club, Fort Huachuca, Ariz.
San Jose Church, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico .
Village of Mariemont, Cincinnati, Ohio .

Airports named for aviation pioneers: Auckland Airport

aviation, Aviation history,

My “At the Airport” column on USAToday.com last week was all about airports and airport terminals in the United States named for aviation pioneers.  You can see that story and photos from many of those airports here, on StuckatTheAirport.com.

There was, of course, not enough room to list all the U.S. airports with links to aviation history, nor to mention some notable international ones, such as the International Terminal at Auckland Airport, which is named for New Zealand aviatrix Jean Gardner Batten (1909-1982).

BattenAucklandAirport

In the 1930s, Batten became well-known for taking a number of record-breaking solo flights across the world, including the first-ever solo flight from England to New Zealand in 1936.

Her Percival Gull airplane is on display in the terminal.

BATTEN AIRPLANE