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[[4 images]] EDWARD VERNON RICKENBACKER THOMAS ETHOLEN SELFRIDGE A. ROY KNABENSHUE ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

EDWARD VERNON RICKENBACKER-Born in Columbus, O., in 1890, he gained fame as a World War I ace.

During World War I, he shot down 22 enemy planes and four balloons and received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Long before he stepped into an airplane, he was a racing car driver who hit 134 miles per hour on the sands of Daytona Beach in 1913. Rickenbacker is most famous for his three-week survival in a rubber life raft in the Pacific during World War II.

In civilian life, Rickenbacker was a successful industrialist, and former president of Eastern Air Lines.

THOMAS ETHOLEN SELFRIDGE-Born in San Francisco in 1882, he pioneered many early flights in aviation.

Under the direction of Alexander Graham Bell, Selfridge flew everything from tetrahedral kites to advanced aircraft which flew over a kilometer (slightly less than a mile) in 1908. In 1908 he helped test the first Army dirigible, and he flew the first airplane in Canada.

On Sept. 17, 1908, while riding as a passenger with Orville, he became the first man to die in a plane crash.

A ROY KNABENSHUE-Born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1876, he was responsible for most of the early development of dirigibles in the United States.

He piloted the first successful dirigible in America, the "California Arrow" at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. He helped the Wright brothers form the Wright Exhibition Co. in 1910, and took it barnstorming. 

He later returned to his first love, dirigibles. 

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL-Born in Scotland in 1847, he is most famous for inventing the telephone.

Few people know he was one of the first men to experiment with flight. He developed a fantastic tetrahedral kite which looked about like a giant honey comb, but had sufficient lift to carry a man on a seven minute flight at an altitude of 168 feet in 1907.

He formed the Aerial Experiment Association in 1907, and built several airplanes, one of which the "June Bug" won the Scientific American Trophy in 1908 for the first powered flight over one kilometer. 

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