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Time magazine, Volume 52 Issue 3. Front cover is an illustration of Howard Hughes –

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle. He had oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.

As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as The Racket in 1928, Hell’s Angels in 1930 and Scarface in 1932. He later acquired the RKO Pictures film studio in 1948, recognized then as one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age, although the production company struggled under his control and ultimately ceased operations in 1957.

Let’s look at the top 10 fascinating facts about Howard Hughes

1. Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932

Through his interest in aviation and aerospace travel, Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932. He hired numerous engineers, designers, and defense contractors. He spent the rest of the 1930s and much of the 1940s setting multiple world air speed records.

The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defence contractor founded on February 14, 1934, by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of Hughes Tool Company. The company was known for producing, among other products, the Hughes H-4 Hercules Spruce Goose aircraft, the atmospheric entry probe carried by the Galileo spacecraft, and the AIM-4 Falcon-guided missile.

2. Howard built the H-4 Hercules, the largest flying boat in history

Hughes H-4 Hercules by tgreyfox –

The Hughes H-4 Hercules is a prototype strategic airlift flying boat designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. Intended as a transatlantic flight transport for use during World War II, it was not completed in time to be used in the war. 

The Hughes H-4 Hercules was the largest flying boat in history and had the longest wingspan of any aircraft from the time it was built until 2019.

3. Hughes became a millionaire at 18

The 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry that drew Hughes’ father. He devised a superior two-cone bit, which made drilling easier and revolutionized the oil industry. Hughes patented the technology in 1909 and, with partner Walter Sharp, formed the Houston-based Sharp-Hughes Tool Company to manufacture the bit. 

After Sharp died in 1912, Hughes bought his interest in the company. He also passed away in 1924 and Howard Jr inherited the thriving company and became a millionaire. The 18-year-old Hughes dropped out of Rice University, let others manage the oil-tool business and set out for Hollywood in 1925.

4. Hughes’ Hell’s Angels movie was one of the most expensive movies of its time

Poster for the American film Hell’s Angels by Employees of United Artists –

In his quest to make the aerial scenes in Hell’s Angels, an action-adventure about World War I pilots, as realistic as possible, Hughes amassed a huge fleet of vintage planes and hired scores of pilots and mechanics.

Hell’s Angels initially was shot as a silent film, but following the fall 1927 release of The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length movie with synchronized dialogue, Hughes decided to reshoot with sound. He spent nearly $4 million to produce Hell’s Angels, which debuted in 1930 and was one of the most expensive films of its time. It also was a hit and put Hughes on the map in Hollywood.

5. Hughes set an around-the-world flight record

On July 10, 1938, Hughes and a four-man crew took off from Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field on an around-the-world flight. He started off flying over Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Hughes made refuelling stops in Â鶹APP, Moscow, Omsk and Yakutsk, Fairbanks and Minneapolis before landing back in Brooklyn. 

There, thousands of spectators greeted Hughes, who had set a new record for circumnavigating the globe, with a time of three days, 19 hours and 17 minutes. He was hailed as a hero and honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City and celebrations around the country.

Read the Top 10 Amazing Facts about Bessie Coleman, who was the first African-American woman to hold a pilot’s license

6. Hughes was part of a CIA plot to recover a sunken Soviet submarine

Photo of Howard Hughes in 1938 by Acme Newspictures –

In March 1968, during the Cold War, a Soviet submarine carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles accidentally sank in the Pacific Ocean. The Soviets embarked on a two-month search for the sub but were unable to locate it; not long afterwards, the U.S. found it some 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii, 16,500 feet below the water’s surface. Believing the 1,750-ton sub was a source of important intelligence information, the CIA launched a complex covert operation, codenamed Project Azorian, to recover it. 

The U.S. commissioned the construction of a ship with the specialized capabilities needed to lift the sub from the ocean’s depths, and the CIA devised a cover story that the vessel, named the Hughes Glomar Explorer, was being built for Howard Hughes, who planned to use it for a new commercial venture: mining minerals from the ocean floor.

7. Hughes was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973

Hughes was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973 and was included in Flying magazine’s 2013 list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranked at No. 25.

The National Aviation Hall of Fame is a museum, annual awards ceremony and learning and research center that was founded in 1962 as an Ohio non-profit corporation in Dayton, Ohio, United States, known as the Birthplace of Aviation with its connection to the Wright brothers.

8. Hughes is largely credited with transforming Vegas into a more refined cosmopolitan city

Howard Hughes speaking before the Press Club. Washington by Harris & Ewing –

Hughes extended his financial empire to include Las Vegas real estate, hotels, and media outlets, spending an estimated $300 million, and using his considerable powers to acquire many of the well-known hotels, especially the venues connected with organized crime. 

He quickly became one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas. He was instrumental in changing the image of Las Vegas from its Wild West roots into a more refined cosmopolitan city. Read the Top 10 Sensational Facts about Las Vegas. 

9. Hughes survived four airplane accidents

One in a Thomas-Morse Scout while filming Hell’s Angels, one while setting the airspeed record in the Hughes Racer, one at Lake Mead in 1943, and the near-fatal crash of the Hughes XF-11 in 1946. 

At Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, he learned to fly from pioneer aviators, including Moye Stephens and J.B. Alexander. He set many world records and commissioned the construction of custom aircraft for himself while heading Hughes Aircraft at the airport in Glendale, CA.

10. In 1953, Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute was established in Miami, Florida and is currently located in Chevy Chase, Maryland with the expressed goal of basic biomedical research, including trying to understand, in Hughes’s words, the “genesis of life itself”, due to his lifelong interest in science and technology. 

Hughes’s first will, which he signed in 1925 at the age of 19, stipulated that a portion of his estate should be used to create a medical institute bearing his name.