Airport Eponyms by MeyerS

This general (later colonel) is regarded as the father of the U.S. Air Force. His promotion of military air power and criticism of top leaders caused friction, resulting in his famous court-martial (he was portrayed by Gary Cooper in a biopic) and the end of his career.

He composed "The Girl from Ipanema", but the airport named after him is also named after a different beach. One of the creators of the bossa nova style, this musician also collaborated with Stan Getz, Frank Sinatra, and João Gilberto.

The airport serving this city is named after two of its mayors, who each served multiple nonconsecutive terms. One was the longest-serving mayor of this city, who termed it "the city too busy to hate." The other was the first African-American mayor, who upgraded transportation infrastructure and was in office when his city was selected to host the Olympic Games.

This Romantic composer, one of music's first widely renowned superstars, endured a turbulent love affair with the French writer George Sand and a long decline in his health. A virtuoso pianist himself, he primarily wrote for solo piano.

This cowboy (and Indian), humorist, trick roper, columnist, political commentator, aviation booster, and one-time highest-paid Hollywood star never met a man he didn't like. A bronze statue of him in the U.S. Capitol faces the House of Representatives chamber, so he can perpetually "keep an eye on Congress."

This Democratic politician served as a cabinet secretary in two administrations, as President Clinton's Secretary of Commerce and as George W. Bush's Secretary of Transportation. Prior to his cabinet service, he was in the House of Representatives for twenty years, and served as mayor of his hometown. As the child of Japanese immigrant parents, he was interned together with his family in a Wyoming internment camp during World War II.

This Harvard-educated soldier and politician served on the city council and in the state legislature and Senate, all of which met in the city where he was born and where his namesake airport is located. In his military service, he rose to the rank of major general, eventually commanding the U.S. Army's 26th Infantry Division (known as the "Yankee Division" for its New England roots.)

She was born in Cairo, as her father was her country's ambassador to Egypt at the time. Educated in London, Rome, and New York, she moved to her country in 1971 and worked for its flag carrier airline -- coincidentally, at the time, it shared her name. She married her country's Hashemite monarch in 1972, bore two children and adopted a refugee orphan, established libraries and cultural events, and called for women's suffrage before dying in a helicopter crash in 1977.

This World War II flying ace proved that he had "the Right Stuff" when he piloted a Bell X-1 rocket plane named after his wife to Mach 1.07 in 1947, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier. He rose to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force, drove the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 twice, and now lives in retirement in California.

This businessman and aviator competed as a golfer in the 1900 and 1904 Olympics (the only time golf has been included as an official Olympic sport) and was on the silver-medal-winning team. He became president of the family business, a pharmaceutical company which made Listerine and which merged with Warner-Hudnut in 1955. (The resulting company was later acquired by Pfizer in 2000.) As an aviator and aviation booster, he backed his friend Charles Lindbergh's New York to Paris flight in 1927, and he developed his namesake airport and sold it to the city in 1928, making it the first municipally-owned airport in the United States.

This lawyer and jurist won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably the desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In 1965, LBJ appointed him as the 96th justice of the Supreme Court, the first African-American to hold that office.

Not the aquatic version of blind man's bluff, this merchant traveller set off for Asia in 1271 at the age of 17, on an epic voyage that was to span 24 years and almost 15,000 miles. After his return, he was imprisoned, wrote a memoir detailing his travels (in which he, his father, and his uncle traveled the Silk Road, escaped from bandits, and met Kublai Khan), was released, and never left his hometown again, dying in 1324.