#national museum of american history
It’s wedding season (but you knew that). This gown was made from a nylon parachute that saved Maj. Claude Hensinger during World War II.
The pilot was returning from a raid over Japan in August 1944 when his engine caught fire. When he proposed to his girlfriend Ruth after the war, he offered her the material from the parachute that saved his life.
She worked with a seamstress to create the bodice, and used the strings on the parachute to shorten the front of the dress and create a train in the back.
The couple married July 19, 1947, and the dress was later donated to our National Museum of American History.
It’s not even the only parachute wedding dress in our collection—it wasn’t uncommon for soldiers’ parachutes, made from fabric scarce during the war, to become wedding attire. #ontrend
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National Doughnut Day goals.
This pastry princess—check out that crown!—is from the Sally L. Steinberg Collection of Doughnut Ephemera in our National Museum of American History’s Archives Center. (Steinberg also considered herself a doughnut princess, as her grandfather Adolph Levitt was America’s original “doughnut king,” having developed the automatic doughnut making machine and founded the modern American doughnut industry.)
We’ve got more than a baker’s dozen in our collections. Find your favorite Smithsonian doughnut to snack on.
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The Smithsonian’sNational Museum of American History has named Benjamin Filene as its new associate director of curatorial affairs as the museum engages in a strategic-planning process focused on public history and an audience-centered approach. Filene began his appointment Feb. 3.
The museum embarked on a strategic-planning process in November 2019 to shape how it will present history and…
