In interviews leading up to his historic 1947 blast through the sound barrier, interviews that questioned what would happen to Chuck Yeager were met with answers that sounded roughly like, “Well, hopefully he’s paid up his insurance.” The sound barrier was beyond belief in 1947. Human flight was only forty years on, and only in the recent timeframe of World War II had progress been made from fabric cloth wings and wooden propellors. Airframes were sleek and metallic, radial engines powerful and faster than ever before, but the speed of sound? Until humans started looking to the stars, this was the frontier to cross next. And Yeager did it, with broken ribs he scored from falling off of a horse, over Rogers Dry Lake in California. To the world over, Yeager had crossed the realm from war hero to nearly superhuman. For Yeager, it was just another Tuesday, just a little bit more special than the others.

In his ninety-seven years on this planet, Charles Elwood Yeager lived a hell of a life. He started out as a farmer’s kid, a skilled sportsman as a teenager who jumped straight into the U.S. Army Air Forces and got lucky enough to make the jump into flight shortly after World War II kicked off. He had been shot down over France, evaded with help from the French Resistance, managed to score “Ace in a Day” after dropping five aircraft during one mission. After the war, he was selected to fly the Bell X-1 after the Bell test pilot demanded a huge payday for performing the task. Post-sonic boom, he was one of the first pilots to fly a MiG-15 after North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok defected to South Korea. He made Brigadier General in 1969 and retired in 1975 after 33 years active. Up until recently, Yeager was still flying, and his last known trip past the barrier was in 2012 as the co-pilot of an F-15 Eagle.

Faster aircraft have come and gone. The speeds from the SR-71 Blackbird make the Bell X-1 look dainty by comparison. But the Blackbird wouldn’t have existed without the X-1. Everybody remembers who did it first. Chuck Yeager had many things to be in awe of during his lifetime. But everybody will remember that he strapped into a rocket-powered dart and proceeded to prove to the world that the sound barrier could be broken.

Fly high.