Invented flight, first American in orbit, first man on the Moon: all from Ohio
Ohio gave America powered flight, the first American to orbit the Earth, and the first man on the Moon; you can fly the whole arc in a weekend. Start at KMGY Dayton-Wright Brothers, the GA gateway to Dayton, where the Wright B Flyer hangar museum sits on the field itself, free, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. Fifteen minutes away, Carillon Historical Park holds the 1905 Wright Flyer III, the world's first practical airplane; across town at Wright-Patterson sit Huffman Prairie, the cow pasture where the Wrights actually learned to fly, and the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the world's largest military aviation museum. Then east to KZZV Zanesville, fifteen minutes from New Concord and John Glenn's boyhood home, now a museum: the Marine fighter pilot who, on February 20, 1962, became the first American to orbit the planet aboard Friendship 7, and who returned to space at 77. Finish at KAXV Wapakoneta, Neil Armstrong's hometown, for the Armstrong Air & Space Museum and the actual Gemini VIII spacecraft he flew. Three airports, sixty-six years: a wooden frame at Kitty Hawk, three orbits of the Earth, a footprint at Tranquility Base.