Thief River Falls TVF

"Han-gaerd" is a Dutch word meaning an enclosure near a house and was derived from the Latin "hanghart" (a place to shoe horses). The French morphed that into "hangar" meaning "shed." Etymology might be fascinating, but early in aviation history a hangar became a place to store aircraft and that is what it means now in either English or French.

In 1903 the Wright Brothers stored their aircraft in what was definitely a shed that they built at Kitty Hawk. It was 16 feet wide and 44 feet long with a door hinged at the top held open by poles. It kept out the sand and wind, but that was about it. A...