Edward O. Southard learned to fly the Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" at March Field in Riverside, California, in 1919. About eighteen months earlier, William Muir Russel was honing his pilot skills at Ashburn Field and then Rantoul Aviation Field, both in Illinois. But that's where the differences in their early flying school experiences end. They both learned to fly in the same plane. They both saw frequent crashes. They both mastered the same controls, take-offs, and landings. And they both first flew solo in a Jenny. In 1919, author William H. Bollman melds Southard's photographs, taken with a...

1899 tells-and shows-exactly what L. Frank Baum experienced at Macatawa Park the very summer he was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. From the long board walks through the woods, to the groups of cottages said to have given inspiration for Munchkinland, to much more. This entry in the Vintage Photo Album Series focuses on a 110-plus-year-old vacation photo album assembled by Hattie A. Talcott of her summer of 1899 at a mystical Chicago summer playland called Macatawa Park. She traveled by horse cab and overnight steamer across Lake Michigan to get there as did much of Chicago's high...