Popular Mechanics:

It was just after sunup on the morning of Oct. 14, 1947, and as I walked into the hangar at Muroc Army Air Base in the California high desert, the XS-1 team presented me with a big raw carrot, a pair of glasses and a length of rope. The gifts were a whimsical allusion to a disagreement I’d had the previous evening with a horse. The horse won. I broke two ribs. And now, as iridescent fingers of sunlight gripped the eastern mountain rims, we made ready to take a stab at cracking the sound barrier–up until that point aviation’s biggest hurdle.

The Bell XS-1 No. 1 streaked past the speed of sound that morning without too much fanfare–broken ribs notwithstanding. And when the Mach indicator stuttered off the scale barely 5 minutes after the drop from our mother B-29, America entered the second great age of aviation development.

It’s an often-told story but still fascinating. If you’re on Twitter, you really should follow the general. Really fun, interesting Twitter feed.