1

Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes was a lot of things: a businessman, a movie director/producer, and a record-breaking pilot. Born in Houston, Texas, he inherited his father’s tool company as a teenager and later moved to Hollywood. His World War I flying movie, Hell’s Angels (1930), used dozens of real planes and became a classic. In 1938, he flew around the world in about 91 hours, setting a new record.

During World War II, Hughes was hired to build a giant flying boat that could carry 750 soldiers. Since metal was needed for the war, he built it mostly of wood. The press called it the "Spruce Goose," a nickname Hughes hated. The war ended before it was ready, and critics said it would never fly. So in 1947, Hughes flew it himself for about a mile over Long Beach Harbor. It never flew again, and today it sits in a museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

2

Neil Armstrong

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil Armstrong said those words on July 20, 1969, when he became the first person to walk on the Moon, and the phrase became one of the most famous ever spoken. Being the first man on the Moon was monumental enough for a lifetime, but it wasn't his only achievement.

A native of Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong served as a Navy pilot during the Korean War, and later became a test pilot. After joining NASA, he flew the Gemini 8 mission in 1966, where, with David Scott, they became the first to connect two spacecraft in orbit, a skill the Moon missions would later depend on.

3

Buzz Aldrin

Second, but no less important, Buzz Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong onto the Moon about 20 minutes later. Before stepping outside, he quietly took communion inside the lunar module, which made it the first religious ceremony ever held on the Moon .

During the Korean War, Aldrin was an Air Force fighter pilot and flew 66 missions. His spacecraft research was so useful that other astronauts nicknamed him "Dr. Rendezvous." In 1966, on the Gemini 12 mission, he made three spacewalks and proved that astronauts could do real work outside a spacecraft. After retiring from NASA and the Air Force, he spent decades pushing for new space missions, including sending humans to Mars. And yes, Toy Story 's Buzz Lightyear was named after him.

4

Chuck Yeager

When Chuck Yeager joined the Air Force in 1941, he started as a mechanic, but quickly became a pilot because of his good eyesight. After his good performance in World War II, he was assigned a mission: to fly faster than the speed of sound, something many experts feared could tear a plane apart. In 1947, Yeager was chosen to fly the Bell X-1 and try to break the sound barrier. Two nights before the flight, he fell off a horse and broke two ribs, but he kept it quiet so he wouldn’t lose his spot.

Once in the air, and with a friend’s help, Yeager climbed down into the small plane and locked the door from inside. Then the plane X-1, named Glamorous Glennis after his wife, was dropped from the bomber; Yeager fired the rockets, and minutes later he became the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. The 1983 movie The Right Stuff tells this story, and Sam Shepard plays him.

5

Orville and Wilbur Wright

Before they created the first plane, the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics in Ohio. The story goes that when they were kids, their father brought home a toy helicopter made of cork, bamboo, and a rubber band. They played with it until it broke, and then they built their own.

Flying and inventing were their obsessions: they observed birds, tested gliders, and learned about balance, chains, and making machines by hand. In 1903, when they built their own wind tunnel, they went to the dunes near Kitty Hawk in North Carolina to test their flyer. Orville took off and stayed in the air for 12 seconds. He covered 120 feet, becoming the first powered airplane flight in history, and the world was never the same.

6

Charles Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh started studying engineering in college but left after two years to learn to fly. For a while, he worked as a stunt pilot at county fairs, walking on wings and jumping with a parachute, until he trained with the Army and got a job flying the mail between St. Louis and Chicago.

On those mail runs, he heard about a $25,000 prize for anyone who could pull off the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Renowned pilots were already trying, and some had died in the attempt. After Lindbergh convinced businessmen in St. Louis to back him, he prepped for the adventure. Flying the Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh left Long Island on May 20, 1927, and landed in Paris about 33 and a half hours later. A huge crowd ran onto the field to greet him, and newspapers started calling him "Lucky Lindy."

7

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart worked as a nurse in Toronto during World War I. Once in 1920, she paid for a 10-minute flight in Long Beach, California, and that was the moment she knew she had to become a pilot. Earhart then took a job at the telephone company to pay for air lessons until she bought a used yellow plane nicknamed "The Canary." In 1922, she flew it to 14,000 feet, a new record for women pilots.

On May 20, 1932, five years after Lindbergh's flight, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic . The trip was rough: she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, while ice formed on the wings, and a fuel leak forced her to land in Paris. Then, about 15 hours later, she landed in a cow pasture in Northern Ireland.

8

Alan Shepard

You probably remember Alan Shepard as the man who played golf on the Moon. He went to the U.S. Naval Academy and later became a Navy test pilot. In 1959, NASA chose him as one of its first astronauts, "the Mercury Seven" (selected for Project Mercury). On May 5, 1961, he became the first American in space.

Two years later, an inner-ear condition called Ménière’s disease started making him dizzy, and NASA wouldn’t let him fly. Shepard spent years working on the ground until he had an operation and was ready to fly again. In 1971, he finally flew to the Moon as commander of Apollo 14. He became the fifth man to walk on the Moon and, at 47, the oldest. Before leaving the lunar surface, he pulled out a golf club head he had attached to a tool handle and hit two balls.

9

John Glenn

In December 1941, John Glenn was in college when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and he left to become a pilot. He flew combat missions for the Marines in World War II and again in Korea. In 1957, he made headlines by flying faster than the speed of sound from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes.

But that wasn’t all. NASA selected him to join the "Mercury Seven." In 1962, piloting the Friendship 7, he became the first man to orbit Earth, circling it three times. Glenn later returned to space in 1998 at age 77 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95), becoming the oldest person to travel into space while participating in aging and microgravity studies.

10

Sally Ride

Los Angeles native Sally Ride first entered the public eye as one of the country’s best junior tennis players. However, she continued studying physics and English at Stanford University, and while working on her physics PhD, she saw a NASA ad in the student newspaper. For the first time, NASA was looking for women astronauts.

About 8,000 women applied, and in 1978 she was one of 35 selected. She helped develop the shuttle's robot arm and also talked to crews from Mission Control on early flights. On June 18, 1983, she flew on Challenger and became the first American woman in space, at age 32.

1

A renovation project saved thousands of lives on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing 189 people. Few people know this part: the death toll could have been much higher. But there was a renovation project underway at the time of the attacks.

The Pentagon’s five-sided structure is divided into five "wedges," and workers had been renovating them one at a time. Flight 77 struck the wedge that had just been completed. Of the 4,500 people who normally worked in that section, only about 800 had moved back in. Without the reinforced construction and the incomplete occupancy, experts believe the casualties would have been catastrophically higher.

2

The Cold War and the hot dog stand

In the middle of the Pentagon’s five-acre center courtyard once stood a modest hot dog stand. According to a Cold War legend (one still retold by official Pentagon tour guides on every public tour), between the 60s and the 80s, Soviet satellite images tracked large groups of high-ranking military officials converging on that small building at the same time every day.

Soviet intelligence reportedly concluded the structure must be the entrance to some underground bunker in America. In reality, all it did was sell lunch. In 2006, the original stand was torn down, and a sandwich shop was built in its place.

3

Its construction began on September 11th, exactly 60 years before the attack

Builders broke ground on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941. That was exactly 60 years to the day before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that would strike the same building.

Construction had been ordered by Army Brigadier General Brehon Somervell, who wanted a permanent headquarters for the Defense Department to replace its then-17 scattered offices across Washington, D.C.

The project was extraordinarily ambitious: plans called for the world’s largest office building to be completed in just 16 months. In the end, the conception, design, and construction of the entire Pentagon building took a total of 15 months.

4

The same person oversaw its construction and the Manhattan Project

Colonel Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers took charge of Pentagon construction in August 1941. He worked six days a week and drove his team relentlessly, at one point employing more than 15,000 workers around the clock.

When the Pentagon was finished in January 1943, Groves was assigned to lead the Manhattan Project, America’s secret program to build the atomic bomb . His deputy, Captain Robert Furman, followed him into the Manhattan Project as chief of foreign intelligence. Together, the men who built the world’s largest office building went on to produce the weapon that ended World War II.

5

Why is it shaped like that?

The Pentagon’s iconic five-sided shape was the consequence of a geographic accident. The original site selected for the building, near Arlington Cemetery, **happened to be bordered on five sides by roads. **Architects designed the structure to fit those boundaries, producing a pentagonal floor plan. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened: worried the massive building would obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington, he ordered the site moved to its current location along the Potomac River. But the five-sided design had already been drawn up, and nobody changed it.

6

It was the first desegregated building in Virginia

When the Pentagon was designed in 1941, segregation was the law in Virginia. Original plans called for doubled bathroom facilities: separate ones for Black and white employees, as required by Virginia statute. But President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, prohibiting racial discrimination in federal employment and government contracting.

As a federal building, the Pentagon was exempt from Virginia law. It became the only building in the state where segregation was not enforced. A fully desegregated federal workplace that opened in 1943. The doubled bathrooms were built anyway, as the plans were too far along to revise, but were never used as separately designated spaces.

7

Its construction was surprisingly frugal and incredibly fast

Ground broke on September 11, 1941, and construction finished on January 15, 1943, just 16 months later. More than 15,000 workers were on site around the clock. Wartime office shortages were so severe that employees moved into completed wings before the rest of the building was finished. Steel was too scarce to use extensively, so builders relied almost entirely on reinforced concrete. The 689,000 tons of sand and gravel required came directly from the nearby Potomac River, cutting transportation costs. The project was budgeted at $35 million, but the final bill was $63 million, which would translate to over $900 million in today’s dollars.

8

You can walk between its farthest points in only 7 minutes

The Pentagon is the world’s largest low-rise office building: 6.5 million square feet of space, which is three times the total floor area of the Empire State Building. Each of its five outer walls is 921 feet long. It has 7,754 windows and 17.5 miles of corridors. Approximately 26,000 military and civilian employees report for work there every day.

Despite that scale, the building’s concentric ring design is so efficient that it takes only about seven minutes to walk between its two farthest points.

9

The man who secretly lived inside its walls

During construction, Colonel Groves drove his deputy, Captain Robert Furman, so relentlessly that Furman rarely left the building. To cope, Furman had contractors build him a small, windowless apartment hidden inside the walls of the Army’s Ordnance Division. In this private room, he could sleep and shower without leaving the premises.

When construction ended and personnel dispersed, knowledge of the hidden room was never passed on to building management. Months later, when Furman returned to Washington on Manhattan Project intelligence business, he found the apartment undiscovered and exactly as he’d left it.

For over a year, he would slip back to the Pentagon, pop open a wall panel, spend the night, and emerge in the morning with his suitcase. He was finally caught in 1943 and forced to surrender the keys. It was never disclosed whether the secret apartment was maintained or eventually absorbed back into the official floor plans.

10

It houses over 30 restaurants, including everyone's favorite chains

The Pentagon feeds roughly 26,000 people a day, and its dining options read less like a military headquarters and more like a mall food court. The main Concourse Food Court, which opened in September 2009 and seats 875 people, is the largest of several dining areas.

Confirmed chains currently inside the building include McDonald’s, Five Guys, Subway, Popeyes, Starbucks (multiple locations), Dunkin’ (two locations), Panera Bread, Taco Bell, Panda Express, Baskin-Robbins, Potbelly, Jamba Juice, and Moe’s Southwest Grill, among others. The building also houses a CVS pharmacy, a florist, a jeweler, and a dry cleaner. In the summer of 2024, Potbelly became the first restaurant to open in the center courtyard. Yes, the very spot where the legendary Cold War hot dog stand once stood.

1

Woolworth’s

Woolworth’s was the place to buy everything from school supplies and toys to household goods and candy—or even to grab lunch. The first store opened its doors in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1879. It was a five-and-dime shop, and the chain soon became one of America’s most recognizable retail names, with over 3,000 stores nationwide at its peak. So, why did it disappear?

With the steady rise of suburban shopping centers and large discount stores, Woolworth’s couldn’t keep up and began a slow decline in the 1960s that culminated in 1997, when it closed its final stores for good.

2

A&P

A&P used to be the spot to get everyday groceries. It began as a tea and coffee business in 1859 and later evolved into one of America’s biggest supermarkets with more than 16,000 stores in the country at its peak. But despite pioneering high-volume retailing, A&P couldn’t stick around.

Over the decades, newer competitors entered the market, and grocery shopping became more and more competitive. Walmart, Target, Aldi, Whole Foods—A&P failed to adapt and filed for bankruptcy twice, first in 2010 and again in 2015, and finally shut down in November 2015.

3

Blockbuster

Blockbuster was the go-to for movie rentals . It dominated the market with 9,100 stores worldwide by 2004, about $6 billion in revenue, and thousands of movies to choose from—it was hard to imagine Blockbuster ever falling, but it did.

The rapid advancement of technology hit Blockbuster hard, with newer options like DVD-by-mail services, Redbox kiosks, and the final blow: streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and more. All Blockbuster corporate-owned stores closed by January 2014; however, you can still visit one holdout location in Bend, Oregon.

4

Montgomery Ward

Long before Amazon, consumers could buy almost anything from Montgomery Ward from the comfort of their homes , and the company would ship it directly to them. It felt like online shopping before the internet. So why did it vanish?

To adapt to newer shopping habits, Montgomery Ward opened physical stores and started competing with brands like Sears; but once suburban malls and discount stores became widespread in the 1980s, Montgomery Ward couldn’t keep pace and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and again in 2001.

5

Circuit City

Circuit City started in 1949 and quickly became the source for TVs, stereos, VCRs, video games, and just about every kind of electronics , especially during the 1980s. The company continued growing by the early 2000s, expanding to more than 600 stores, though one controversial decision made it trip and fall.

Circuit City was already struggling to compete with Best Buy and Walmart. And in 2007, it replaced its commissioned sales staff with low-paid hourly workers, damaging customer service—often considered one of Circuit City’s biggest strategic mistakes. By March 2009, the chain was gone.

6

Caldor

There was a time when one trip to Caldor could cover almost everything on your shopping list. Founded in 1951, it became a major one-stop discount department store . By the 1990s, it had grown to more than 150 stores across New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, but in 1995 it filed for bankruptcy. What happened in between?

Big box stores like Walmart and Target were expanding rapidly, and Caldor simply fell behind as people moved toward newer retail formats that combined department stores and supermarkets. Plus, the company took on a lot of debt in 1991, which only made things worse. Caldor finally closed for good in 1999.

7

Borders

Borders is a reminder of a time when buying a book was an experience, rather than just clicking a few buttons online. It opened in 1971 and set itself apart from other modern bookstores. At Borders, you could spend an entire afternoon browsing not just books, but music and DVDs or even grabbing a coffee.

Around 2003–2004, Borders had more than 1,200 stores worldwide , but it failed to adapt to an inevitable growing trend: online book sales. Amazon eventually took over, and Borders couldn’t stay in the game, closing its final location in September 2011.

8

G.C. Murphy

Much like Woolworth’s, G.C. Murphy was a five-and-dime store that sold a little bit of everything and had lunch counters or snack bars where people would hang out. The company opened in 1906, and it operated more than 500 stores by 1976.

But once the traditional five-and-dime model came under pressure from discount giants, G.C. Murphy was forced to adapt. The chain did make some efforts and experimented with bigger stores and different formats, but it wasn’t enough, and G.C. Murphy filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

9

Zayre

Zayre entered the market in 1956 as a classic discount department store that looked more like a warehouse . It was a no-frills, self-service shopping experience with massive stores, wide-open interiors, and exposed ceilings where you could find lots of everyday items like clothing, household goods, or appliances at low prices.

While it was pretty successful, especially across the Northeast and Midwest, Zayre struggled to keep up with giants like Target. It tried to reinvent itself by founding TJ Maxx in 1977, but eventually sold the remaining Zayre stores to Ames in 1988, and the Zayre name vanished by 1990.

10

Service Merchandise

Service Merchandise was founded in 1934 and, unlike typical retail stores, it introduced a strange new concept called the " catalog showroom " in 1960, where display floors showcased single working samples of products, and the actual inventory was stored in an adjacent backroom warehouse. Customers would look at a catalog, place an order, and an employee would bring it to them.

The concept proved successful, and Service Merchandise operated more than 400 showrooms by the mid-1990s. But Service Merchandise’s model meant longer waiting times, and traditional discount stores began offering a faster and easier shopping experience. The company tried to modernize by introducing electronic inventory systems, but it didn’t work out. By 2002, Service Merchandise was gone.