The 1930s Rooftop Aviation School of Galeries Lafayette, Paris

I came across these curious photographs from the French National library, dated to 1932 and labelled, “École d’aviation sur le toit des Galeries Lafayette” – Aviation school on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette. A rooftop flight school above one of Paris’ most famous department stores, smack in the middle of the city’s busiest shopping district? I had…

The Little-Known Los Angeles Cemetery Where LA’s Hidden History is Buried

There are plenty of dead people in Los Angeles. Some of them are even in the ground. Forest Lawn is very formal. Tidy. Hollywood Forever feels as much like a park as it does a boneyard, a chic place to commune with the dead. That’s not Valhalla. There are ghosts in the jet trails. It’s not just…

Before Amelia Earhart, there was the Forgotten First Lady of Flight

We have all heard of Amelia Earhart, breaking records as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, but where did the inspiration for her aviation adventure come from? Two decades earlier, the lesser known but equally high-flying Harriet Quimby blazed the trail and proved cockpits aren’t just for men. In 1911, she became the…

Unsung Heroes of WWII: The All-Female WASP Squad

Where there’s a will, there’s a way — but for pilot Jacqueline Cochrane, there had to be even more. “To live without risk, for me,” she said, “would be tantamount to death.” One of the biggest risks of her career was pioneering the US organisation, WASPS (Women Airforce Service Pilots). In the heat of WWII,…

Meet the Other Legendary Female Aviator (who Could Drink Any Sailor Under the Table)

Amelia Earhart might be the first woman aviator that comes to mind, but she was only one of an incredible group of flying female record breakers during the golden age of aviation in the 1920s and 30s. The Ninety-Nines was founded in 1929, a group of female aviators named for the 99 charter members when there were…

It Took an African Princess to become the First Black Flight Attendant, but Diversity in Aviation Has Yet to Take Flight

In HBO’s hit series, The Flight Attendant, actress Kaley Cuoco does a sterling job of portraying how many of us would typically draw a flight attendant if we were asked to. Slim build, check. Perfectly highlighted blonde hair swept immaculately into a chignon, check. Carefully applied makeup, check. Caucasian woman, check. As we catapult through…

The Long Lost World of the Luxury Flying Boat

For glamorous, long-distance travel in the 1930s, there was nothing to quite match the grandeur of the Flying Boat. Whilst ocean steam liners and plush sleeper train cars have their charms, surely no other travel vessel can beat the Pan Am Clipper Class. These sleek, hulking seaplanes were the ultimate luxury– flying and floating five…

America’s Boneyards: Where Airplanes go to Die

Before they are put to rest, airplanes undergo funeral-esque rituals known as ‘pickling’. Their engines are removed, the windows covered and the fluids drained. But of course these giants are too big to bury. In the parched deserts, where a dry climate is an old machine’s best ally, aircrafts young and old lie nose to…

Beauties and their Bombers: Meet the “Top Gun” Heroines of WW2

The term war hero doesn’t usually bring to mind images of it-girls or front page glamour shots… But the ladies of the female section of the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) singlehandedly transformed the idea of what it meant to be a war hero. They were the glamour girls of the Second World War, but they were…

The Forgotten Giant Arrows that Guide you Across America

If you’re ever really lost on a road trip across America, and I’m talking really lost (let’s say the battery on your smartphone just died along with that compass application you downloaded for situations just like this), perhaps you might be lucky enough to find yourself next to one of the giant 70 foot concrete…