Howard Hughes Hughes The Aviator And Engineer Hughes

Hughes was born in Houston, Texas. As a teenager, he declared that his goals in life were to become the world's best golfer, the world's best pilot, and the world's best movie producer. In 1923 he inherited the highly profitable Hughes Tool Company from his father, Howard R. Hughes, Sr., who invented the diamond-studded drill bit for oil wells.

1 Hughes the aviator and engineer

In aviation, Hughes set many world records, and designed and built aircraft for as well as heading Hughes Aircraft (merged with RaytheonRaytheon Company is a major United States military contractor based in Waltham, Massachusetts. At least 80 percent of Raytheon's revenues are obtained from contracts with the United States government. It is the second largest military contractor in the wo in 19981998 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year of the Ocean''. Events January January 1998 A massive ice storm, caused by El Nino, strikes New England, southern Ontario and Quebec, resulting).

In 1938, the William P. Hobby AirportWilliam P. Hobby Airport is named after former Texas governor William P. Hobby and is located in Houston, Texas. Its IATA Airport Code is HOU. It was first called Houston Municipal Airport in 1937. It was named Howard R. Hughes Airport in 1938, but becaus in Houston, Texas, known at the time as the Houston Municipal Airport, was named after him as "Howard Hughes Airport", but the name was changed back since people opposed naming the airport after someone alive at the time.

One of his greatest endeavors was the Spruce GooseThe Spruce Goose is a nickname commonly given to the Hughes H-4 Hercules an aircraft designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft company. It is the largest flying boat, and has the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever built. Due to wartime restrictions on, a massive flying boat completed just after the end of World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough. The Spruce Goose only flew once (with Hughes at the controls) in 1947Events January January 1 British mines nationalized January 1 Nigeria gains limited autonomy January 1 The Canadian Citizenship Act went into effect January 3 Proceedings of the United States Congress are televised for the first time. January 10 United Na. Because the U.S. Government denied him the use of metal, Hughes built the entire plane from wood (the plane was constructed of birch rather than spruce) to fulfill his contract. The plane was on display alongside the RMS Queen MaryThe RMS Queen Mary was a Cunard Line (then Cunard White Star Line) ocean liner that sailed the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967. She was designed to be Britain's answer to the European super-liners of the late twenties and early thirties. The Queen in Long Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach is a city located in southern Los Angeles County, California, on the Pacific coast. It is one of the busiest sea ports in the world. Its location is 33°47' North, 118°10' West, about 20 miles (30 km) south of downtown Los Angeles. According to for many years before being moved to McMinnville, Oregon.

On January 19, 1937 Hughes set a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. Then on July 10, 1938 he set another new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world.

2 Hughes: businessman, movie producer, and philanthropist

His best-known film may be The Outlaw starring Jane Russell, for whom he designed the first cantilevered push-up bra . He also wooed many of Hollywood's most famous actresses, including Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Jane Russell. As a producer his films The Racket in 1928, and The Front Page in 1931 were nominated for Oscars.

He bought into Transcontinental & West Airline (later TWA) in 1937 and acquired RKO in 1948. He was forced to sell out of TWA in 1966 for around $500m. Hughes Space and Communications was founded in 1961. During the 1970s, Hughes went back into the airline business, buying airline Air West and renaming it to Hughes Airwest.

In 1953, Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute formed with the goal of basic biomedical research including trying to understand in Hughes' words: "genesis of life itself". Initially viewed by many as a tax haven for his wealth, and was the topic of a protracted legal battle between Hughes and the Internal Revenue Service which Hughes ultimately won. After his death in 1976, the institute grew dramatically to become one of the most significant philanthropical organizations devoted to biological and medical research with a 2002 endowment of $11 billion.

3 Hughes and espionage

In 1972, Hughes was approached by the CIA to help secretly recover a Soviet nuclear submarine which had sunk near Hawaii four years before. He agreed. Thus the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a special-purpose salvage vessel, was born. Hughes's involvement provided the CIA with a plausible cover story, having to do with civilian marine research at extreme depths. In 1974 the Glomar Explorer successfully raised the Soviet vessel, which yielded two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic machines, although during recovery, due to a mechanical failure in the recovery grapple, approximately half of the submarine broke off, falling to the ocean floor. Unfortunately, this section held many of the most sought after items.

4 Hughes the recluse

As time passed, Hughes developed debilitating symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He became a recluse, living a drug-addled life locked in darkened rooms and terrified of germs. He moved from hotel to hotel, from the Beverly Hills Hotel to Boston to Las Vegas, where he bought the Desert Inn (because they threatened to evict him) and several other hotel/casinos (Castaways, New Frontier, Landmark, Sands and Silver Slipper). He was known for modernizing Las Vegas by buying it from the Mafia. He bought television stations such as KLAS-TV in Las Vegas so that there would be something to watch when he was up all night with insomnia. He became addicted to codeine and other painkillers, was extremely frail, wore Kleenex boxes as shoes, and stored his urine in jars. As he deteriorated, he moved to the Bahamas, Vancouver, London, and several other places, always living in the top floor penthouse with the windows blacked out. Every time he moved out, the hotel seemed to need to remodel to clean up after him. Hughes died of renal failure on an airplane en route from his penthouse in Mexico to the Methodist Hospital in Houston on 5 April, 1976 at the age of 70. Much of his strange behavior at the end of his life has been attributed to tertiary stage syphilis by modern biographers.

Melvin Dumar claimed that in 1975, he picked up Howard Hughes as a hitchhiker, and that after giving Hughes the ride, Hughes made Dumar sole inheritent of the Hughes estate. However, subsequent court proceedings proved Dumar's claims to be fraudulent. The movie Melvin and Howard details this story (see also Howard Hughes will ).

In 1972 author Clifford Irving claimed he had co-written the authorized autobiography of Hughes, and created a media sensation. Prior to publication, Hughes, in a rare telephone conference, denounced Irving, exposing the entire project as an elaborate hoax. Irving later spent 14 months in jail.

5 Books

Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele - Empire: The Life, Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes (1979)

6 Hughes as fictional inspiration

The following fictional characters appear to have been, in part, patterned after Hughes:

"Willard Whyte" of the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever
" Montgomery Burns" of The Simpsons, especially in the episode $pringfield
"Jonas Cord" in Harold Robbins' novel The Carpetbaggers
Howard Hughes makes an appearance in the comic book and motion picture The Rocketeer.
Hughes appears in James Ellroy's political crime novel American Tabloid.
Steven Carter's novel I was Howard Hughes is a "picture of a Hughes who might have been."

Howard Hughes is also a British newsreader and presenter for the London radio station LBC.

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