William Edward Boeing was an American aviation pioneer who founded the Pacific Airplane Company in 1916, which a year later was renamed to The Boeing Company, now the largest exporter in the United States by dollar value and among the largest aerospace manufacturers in the world.
25 Facts About William Boeing
2.
William Boeing helped create the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation in 1929 and served as its chairman.
3.
William Boeing received the Daniel Guggenheim Medal in 1934 and was posthumously inducted in to the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1966, ten years after his death.
4.
William Boeing was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Marie M Ortmann, from Vienna, Austria, and Wilhelm Boing from Hohenlimburg, Germany.
5.
William Boeing's move to the United States was disliked by his father and he received no financial support.
6.
William Boeing later made a fortune from North Woods timber lands and iron ore mineral rights on the Mesabi Range of Minnesota, north of Lake Superior.
7.
In 1890, when William was eight, his father died of influenza and his mother soon moved to Europe.
8.
William Boeing attended school in Vevey, Switzerland, and returned to the US for a year of prep school at St Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire nearer Boston.
9.
William Boeing's mother remarried in 1898 and moved to Virginia.
10.
William Boeing enrolled at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, dropping out in 1903 to go into the lumber business.
11.
William Boeing was successful in the venture, in part by shipping lumber to the East Coast via the then-new Panama Canal, generating funds that he would later apply to a very different business.
12.
In 1910, at the Dominguez Flying Meet, William Boeing asked every pilot foreign and domestic if he could go for an airplane ride and was repeatedly denied except for French aviator Louis Paulhan.
13.
William Boeing waited and Paulhan finished the meet and left never giving William Boeing his ride.
14.
William Boeing decided to go into the aircraft business, using an old boat works on the Duwamish River near Seattle for his factory.
15.
On March 3,1919, Willam William Boeing partnered with Eddie Hubbard to make the first delivery of international airmail to the United States.
16.
William Boeing had previously been married to Nathaniel Paschall, a real estate broker with whom she had two sons, Nathaniel "Nat" Paschall Jr.
17.
Bertha William Boeing was the daughter of Howard Cranston Potter and Alice Kershaw Potter.
18.
William Boeing divested himself of ownership as his holding company, United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, broke into three separate entities:.
19.
William Boeing began investing most of his time in his horses in 1937.
20.
William Boeing spent the remainder of his life in property development and thoroughbred horse breeding.
21.
William Boeing's primary residence for most of his life was a mansion in The Highlands community close to Seattle; the William E Boeing House was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
22.
William Boeing died on September 28,1956, at the age of 74, three days before his 75th birthday.
23.
William Boeing was pronounced dead on arrival at the Seattle Yacht Club, having had a heart attack aboard his yacht, Taconite, in Puget Sound, Washington.
24.
William Boeing's ashes were scattered off the coast of British Columbia, where he spent much of his time sailing.
25.
William Boeing was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, in 1966.