The space history department. You can join the conversation, theyll take your phone calls and emails and tweets. The 40th anniversary of the smithsonian air and space museum, live in evening beginning at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. Each week American History tvs american artifacts takes viewers behind the scenes, we visited the National Portrait gally comment rating the Amelia Earhart disappearance, she was called lady lindy and the mystery surrounding her loss continues to fascinate americans today. Welcome to the National Portrait gallery. Im the curator of photographs here at the gallery. When visitors come to the portrait gallery and showing them around the exhibition, i often ask them, what do you know about Amelia Earhart . We know she was the first woman to fly across the atlantic and we also know that she disappeared tragically in 1937. Thats what most visitors understand about Amelia Earhart. What this exhibition hopes to do is to reveal more of the complexity o
Smithsonian national air and Space Museum Live this evening beginning at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3s American History tv. Next on American History tv, nasas earliest days with wally funk. One of 13 women selected to be the first lady astronaut trainees or f. L. A. T. S, this is sometimes called the mercury 13, as they underwent some of the same physiological tests as their male counterparts, the mercury 7 astronauts. Unlike the mercury 7, these women never flew a nasa mission. Funk was interviewed as part of the Nasa Johnson Space Center oral history collection. This is about 50 minutes. This is carol butler and im doing an oral history for the Nasa History Office with wally funk. Retired ntsb investigator, senior Flight Instructor, chief pilot. Wonderful woman of aerospace. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much for having me. To begin if we could talk briefly about your early career and your interest in aviation developing and how you, how you moved forward into the a
Our guide is curator jeremy kinney, who shows us some of the museums rare and oneofakind artifacts to tell the quest to go higher, faster, and further during the first half century of aviation. Jeremy kinney hello. Were going to go through a tour of some artifacts that really stand out in terms of the story of higher, faster, and farther. First, i want to talk about the museum overall. The museum has over 8 million visitors a year. Looking at the story of flight in the atmosphere, where i work in, we are looking at 500 aircraft and helicopters. Of those aircraft, about 67 are on display in the National Mall building. What supports these artifacts is up to 50,000 small and medium artifacts. Were going to talk about the story of higher, faster, and farther which is seen as a cliche in the history of aviation but has a real meaning. We look at the people who made this quest of flying in the third dimension a reality. The idea of flying to the highest altitudes, fastest speeds, and longest
Take three months to start back in the old days. Even took two or three days when we first started doing it by air because they flew by day and then took the train at night and flew by day and took the train. So the range speed pay load and the capabilities and safety, safety is a really major portion of this entire program. Youre going to keep it for a few more minutes and then show our audience some of the artifacts and exhibits here at the museum but let me get a call joining us from oregon. Youre on the air. Oh, awesome. Its very nice to meet you, general. My question for you is actually a twopart question. One, how many exhibits are actually on display . And what is your favorite exhibit . We have 22 galleries. And the, probably, im not going to give you a number but its, ill say its more than 160 actual artifacts. Im talking about large artifacts. If we count the metals and the patches and some of the other smaller things, it gets into the thousands, actually. So, and i mentioned
Programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule, upcoming programs, and to keep up with the latest history news. Welcome to lafayette and West Lafayette, indiana, located on the wabash river. West lafayette is home to Purdue University. With the help of our Comcast Cable partners, over the next hour and 45 minutes, we will look at the history of the cities. Learn about William Henry harrison and the battle of tippecanoe. It was cold and rainy, it was early november. The troops were low on provisions. They had limited manpower and equipment. Harrison complained about his shortage of axis and their poor quality in the building of Fort Harrison on the way up. He had the troops build bonfires to keep them warm and ward off the rainfall, but had them sleep in battle conditions fully dressed on their weapons. Videoer, visit cspans archives which houses over 200,000 hours of Public Affairs programming. The archives started as an id