Photographer Page

James A. Sugar

Grosvenor and Melvin Payne—pictured here in 1969—had a "mutually wary" relationship when Payne was the Society’s dynamic president and Grosvenor was on the track to the editorship, Grosvenor writes. "We agreed on two things: our love for the Society and our reverence for its principal architect, my grandfather GHG, depicted in the portrait above us."

A falling apple, said to be from this tree outside Sir Isaac Newton’s birthplace in Woolsthorpe Manor, England, allegedly hit the great physicist on the head, inspiring him to formulate the laws of gravity. The tale, written by William Stukeley, Newton’s friend and first biographer, is recorded in an 18th-century manuscript in the archives of the Royal Society in London, but Keith Moore, the Society’s librarian, wryly describes the apple story as “an 18th-century sound bite.” Was Newton a spin doctor who stretched the truth? “I think you could look at it as a core of truth,” Moore says. “He really did have an insight. But I do not think the apple went plonk on his head. It would have concussed him.”

Experimental aircraft designer Burt Rutan shows off SpaceShipOne, a prototype space plane, at his workshop in Mojave, California. SpaceShipOne was the first non-government vehicle piloted tomore than 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface, winning Rutan the Ansari X Prize on October 4, 2004.

Aspiring astronauts experience 30-second intervals of weightlessness in a NASA training aircraft. To create the effect, the plane flies in parabolas—and thus earns the nickname "The Vomit Comet."

Aspiring astronauts experience 30-second intervals of weightlessness in a NASA training aircraft. To create the effect, the plane flies in parabolas—and thus earns the nickname "The Vomit Comet."

Farmers rest by their truck after loading straw in Delaware County, Iowa.

Boys walk a herd of sheep home in Foulksmills in this 1969 National Geographic photo.