History of aviation
The first flight of man began over one hundred years ago by the two most influential pilots to have ever lived the, Wright brothers. Orville and Wilbur were their names, two boys raised in Dayton Ohio not to far from medina ohio. The passion for flying began as young boys when their dad one day brought home a toy helicopter made by a french builder which was powered by a rubber band which they were both amazed by it and built their own when they broke the toy. Eventually they worked their way up to building gliders and model planes which were successful but the still wanted to achieve good air time. So they came up with the idea of a engine powered plane which in 1903 their dreams came true and made them the most influential pilots of all time and guided the way for future pilots.
In 1909 , flying had attracted all sorts of people, including possibly more than its share of eccentrics and droll characters. Arguably, the best example of this is Louis Bleriot, who went from a national joke to a national hero in the space of the thirty­seven minutes it took him to fly across the English Channel. Blériot had made a fortune manufacturing gadgetry for the booming automobile market. He had an engineering degree, but his reputation was that he was clumsy and erratic, a charming mustache man. But On July 25, 1909, he piloted his Blériot XI, a monoplane with a 25­horsepower engine, across the English Channel from Calais, France, to Dover, Eng.
The first to ever do so which gave him his national fame.
In 1924, four Douglas World Cruisers and eight American crewmen set out from Seattle,
Washington, to attempt the first around­the­world airplane flight. One hundred seventy­five days later three of the aircraft and crews became the first to circumnavigate earth. The Douglas World
Cruiser biplane was a variant of the Navy’s DT­2 torpedo bomber that could be operated either with wheels or floats. The prototype was delivered 45 days after the contract was let in summer
1923. Tests were successful, and four more aircraft were ordered.
A pioneering aviator and inspirational figure, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and set many other records throughout her career. Her disappearance in 1937 during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe devastated admirers across the United States and around the world. Her public career lasted less than a decade (from 1928 to
1937), but she used her fame to promote two causes dear to her: the advancement of commercial aviation and the advancement of women. Amelia was a good getter and determine to reach for the skies unfortunately many say that was the reason she disappeared.
Chuck Yeager was an American test pilot who was the first person to break the sound barrier the point where a speeding object (such as an airplane) passes the speed of sound.Yeager made his history­setting flight on Oct. 14, 1947 in an airplane he dubbed Glamorous Glennis, after his wife. The Bell X­1 rocket plane (which today hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space
Museum) passed Mach 1 following a drop from a B­29 airplane. The monumental "top secret" event was kept classified until 1948, but once it hit the public airwaves, Yeager became a

celebrity. He also received a prestigious aviation award called the Collier Trophy, which called his flight the greatest achievement in aviation since the Wright brothers first took flight in 1903.
On October 4, 1957, the USSR scored the first victory of the " space race
" when it successfully launched the world's first artificial satellite,
Sputnik,
into Earth's orbit. In response, the
United States consolidated its various military and civilian space efforts into NASA, which dedicated itself to beating the Soviets to manned space flight. In January 1959, NASA began the astronaut selection procedure, screening the records of 508 military test pilots and choosing 110 candidates. This