Museum of American Exceptionalism
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Still Building

The record did not stop in 1980. Americans are still flying, building and fighting like this.

2001–2024 · 10 exhibits
  1. The Wall of Names at the Flight 93 National Memorial, with the Ceremonial Gate looking out toward the crash site
    2001Open nowFlight 93They learned what the hijackers had done with the other planes, took a vote, and fought back over Pennsylvania.40passengers and crew
  2. Green Berets of Task Force Dagger ride with General Dostum’s horsemen in the Darya Suf valley, northern Afghanistan, autumn 2001
    2001Open nowThe Horse SoldiersWeeks after 9/11, twelve Green Berets rode with Afghan cavalry, called in B-52s and helped topple the Taliban.12Green Berets
  3. Smoke rises over Fallujah after an air strike on an insurgent stronghold, as Marines of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, search the city, 10 November 2004.
    2004Open nowFallujahMarines and soldiers cleared a fortified city house by house, the hardest urban battle since Hue.9days to break the city’s defenses
  4. Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone at Macworld, Moscone West, San Francisco, 9 January 2007
    2007Open nowThe iPhoneSteve Jobs took one device out of his pocket and put the internet in everyone else’s.3BiPhones shipped
  5. The NY Waterway ferry Thomas Jefferson, Capt. Vincent Lombardi, pulls alongside Flight 1549 as passengers wait on the wings, 15 January 2009
    2009Open nowMiracle on the HudsonGeese took both engines at 2,800 feet over New York. Sully put the airliner down on the Hudson and every soul walked away.155aboard, all saved
  6. President Obama, Vice President Biden and the national security team receive an update on the mission in the White House Situation Room, 1 May 2011
    2011Open nowThe Bin Laden RaidNearly ten years after 9/11, Navy SEALs flew into Pakistan in the dark and got him.3,520days after 9/11
  7. A drilling rig works the Bakken oil field near Williston, North Dakota, June 2011
    2018Open nowThe Shale RevolutionAmerican drillers cracked the rock and made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.#1oil producer
  8. Army Capt. Isaiah Horton, a doctor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, gets one of the military’s first COVID-19 shots, 14 December 2020.
    2020Open nowOperation Warp SpeedThe previous record for a new vaccine was four years. Americans did it in eleven months.11months
  9. Perseverance takes a selfie with Ingenuity, about 13 feet away on the floor of Jezero Crater, 6 April 2021
    2021Open nowFirst Flight on MarsA four-pound helicopter flew in air one percent as thick as Earth’s, 117 years after Kitty Hawk.39seconds in the air
  10. Starship lifts off from Starbase, Texas, on its fifth flight test, 13 October 2024.
    2024Open nowThe Rocket Comes HomeSpaceX landed an orbital booster upright in 2015. In 2024 it caught a 233-foot one in the arms of the launch tower.233 ftbooster caught