It was 100 years ago this week – way back in 1924, in the thick of the early roaring days of aviation history – when a giant U.S. Navy airship visited the Puget Sound and took the population by storm.

While aircraft carriers are a staple of modern naval power, the United States Navy once experimented with an even more ambitious concept: flying aircraft carriers. These massive rigid airships, ...

Long before the first airplanes took to the skies, humans had already overcome gravity with the help of airships. Starting with crude hot air balloons, the 18th century saw the development of more ...