Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is a actor and film producer. He has received many
awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004), and has been nominated by the Academy Awards,
Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. DiCaprio began his career appearing in TV commercials and soon landed roles in shows
such as the ABC sitcom Growing Pains in the early 1990s. He made his film debut
in the sci-fi/horror comedy Critters 3 (1991). DiCaprio’s first major role was in This
Boy’s Life (1993).

1993

1997

Leonardo DiCaprio as FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, in
Clint Eastwood’s current biopic J. Edgar.

Major Robert White flew his X-15 rocket plane (above) at a world record speed
of 4,093 mph. The flight made him the first pilot to fly a winged craft at six times
the speed of sound (Mach 6). President John F. Kennedy used the occasion to
confer the most prestigious award in American aviation, the Robert J. Collier
Trophy, jointly to White and three of his fellow X-15 pilots; NASA’s Joseph
Walker, CDR Forrest S. Peterson of the United States Navy, and North
American Aviation test pilot Scott Crossfield.

The Robert J. Collier Trophy, considered to be the “Oscar” of
space achievement.

The Hughes H-4 Hercules, known as the “Spruce Goose” by its critics, made its first
and only flight on Sunday November 2, 1947. It was the largest seaplane ever built
with the largest wingspan of any aircraft in history. The Hughes Hercules in on at
the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.    

 

Victory at Sea is a NBC-TV documentary series about naval warfare during
World War ll. The original broadcast aired from Sunday October 26, 1952
to May 3, 1953. The series won an Emmy award in 1954 as “best public
affairs program”. The music soundtrack, by Richard Rodgers and Robert
Russell Bennett, was made into a record album.

Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr. [October 25, 1888-March 11, 1957]

Richard Byrd was a naval officer and a pioneering American aviator,
polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. In 1926, he flew a triple
prop plane over the north pole, made an early transatlantic flight in 1927,
and mounted the first of five expeditions to Antarctica in 1928. Byrd had
claimed that his expeditions had been the first to reach both the North
and South Poles by air. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the
highest honor for heroism given in the United States.

Admiral Byrd

The Ford Tri-Motor used by Richard Byrd on his flight over the South
Pole. It is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn,
Michigan.