The Hughes Flying Boat, at one time the largest aircraft ever built,
was piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight
in Long Beach Harbor, California.

Built with laminated birch and spruce (hence the nickname the
Spruce Goose) the massive wooden aircraft had a wingspan
longer than a football field and was designed to carry more than
700 men to battle.

Howard Hughes was a successful Hollywood movie producer when
he founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932. He personally
tested cutting-edge aircraft of his own design and in 1937 broke the transcontinental flight-time record.

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (1905 – 1976)

The Spruce Goose is now on display at the Evergreen
Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

WW1 British first prototype tank called Little Willie. It was an
Armored Personnel Carrier. It can be found at the Tank
Museum, Bovington, Wareham, United Kingdom.

On September 6, 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie
rolled off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from
an overnight success. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches
and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour.

However, improvements were made to the original prototype
and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.

The British developed the tank in response to the trench
warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named
Ernest  Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee
for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armored vehicle   
with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break 
through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory.        

The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill,
who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organized a
Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype. To keep
the project secret from enemies, production workers were
reportedly told the vehicles they were building would be used
to carry water on the battlefield (alternate theories suggest the
shells of the new vehicles resembled water tanks). Either  
way, the new vehicles were shipped in crates labeled “tank”
and the name stuck.

KENT COUNTY, Mich. (WWMT) — A construction project turned
into a dig site after road crews uncovered mastodon bones last
week in Michigan.

Crews were working on the Geers Intercounty drain construction
project in Newaygo when Drain Commissioner Ken Yonker said
an orange tint in the soupy mud had the team growing suspicious
that it could be bones.

Dr. Redman said the bones are expected to be on view at the
Grand  Rapids Public Museum, but the conservation process
could take up to 1 1/2 years until they’re ready for display.

The museum is working with the University of Michigan’s
Museum of Paleontology to continue studying the bones.

Grand Rapids Public Museum Science Curator Dr. Cory
Redman.

the glasses rock legend Buddy Holly was wearing when his plane crashed February 3, 1959.

The Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas.

WASHINGTON (WJLA) — Yoda’s ears in Star Wars. Elvish ears in the
Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sci-fi and fantasy films over the years have
had their fair share of recognizable auricles.

The most famous of all of them will be on display in Washington,
D.C. next year: prosthetic ears made for Mr. Spock (above).

Adam and Julie Nimoy, children of Leonard Nimoy, who played
Spock in the Star Trek franchise for decades, donated the ears
to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Wednesday.

Leonard Nimoy as Spock on “Star Trek”.

Leonard Simon Nimoy (March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015)