Tag: air force

October 14, 1947: Yeager Breaks The Sound Barrier

Today in 1947, U.S. Air Force pilot Charles "Chuck" Yeager officially broke the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1 aircraft, which he christened The Glamorous Glennis. The Bell X-1 was the result of the USAF modifying designs from the U.K.'s Ministry of Aviation, which started work on breaking the sound barrier in 1942, but the project was ultimately cancelled. Former Air Force pilot George Welch claimed to have broken the sound barrier 2 weeks prior, but, although his story was substantiated by many sources, it was never officially recognized.

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July 8, 1947: Aliens Land On Earth! (But Not Really)

Today in 1947, the U.S. Air Force released a press conference confirming the crashing of a "flying disc" near Roswell Army Air Field in Roswell, NM. The object in question was actually a balloon from a top-secret Air Force operation called Project Mogul, in which microphones were flown in high-altitude balloons in an attempt to detect Soviet Union nuclear weapon testing. The initial story given by the air force was that it was simply a crashed weather balloon. Conspiracy theories at the time died down almost instantly, and it wasn't until the late '70s that interest piqued again. By the 90's, the names Roswell and…

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