This maze of hallways is the archives of aviation’s greats—not the Stupid Pilot Tricks Repository. We’re awed by images of the Montgolfier brothers and their good sense to launch the world’s first flyable aircraft with a sheep, rooster and duck before stocking its basket with humans (who weren’t themselves). While they were brilliant, Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier is wrongly credited with the ultimate flight safety decision-making phrase, “Will doing this make me look stupid in the NTSB report?”
We read of astounding accomplishments, including the first outside loop, and the genius of Jimmy Doolittle with his doctorate in aeronautical engineering from MIT. After setting numerous records while surviving the slaughterhouse of air racing in the 1902s and ’30s, he retired, saying, “I have yet to hear anyone engaged in this work dying of old age.” He died quietly at age 96.
