Barrier Broken

On this day in 1947, United States Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person to achieve sustained flight faster than the speed of sound.

What the website doesn't say but what Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and Yeager's own autobiography note is that he did it with two broken ribs he earned by falling off a horse two nights before the flight designed to go supersonic. He sneaked off to a veterinarian to have them wrapped and a friend sawed off a broom handle so he could use it as a lever to seal the hatch of his plane. The idea of reporting the injury and either delaying the flight or letting someone else take it was apparently not considered.

Right stuff indeed.