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We have all heard the accounts of his peculiarities.  Great Flickr find puts some interesting meat on the bone.  Fascinating stuff–

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Howard Hughes assembled what the paper called Houston’s first motorized bicycle at the age of 12 from parts of a motor that belonged to his father. Also around this time he had his father purchase a fine automobile, a Bearcat, for the sole purpose of disassembling and reassembling it, which the young Hughes did successfully. Though Hughes did have one childhood friend, neighbors recalled that when he wasn’t under his mother’s watchful house arrest, the solitary boy would ride his bike in circles around the driveway of their home in the Montrose area of Houston.

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Howard Hughes (shown here at age 25) was still considered a minor in Texas by the time both of his parents had died. He charmed a Houston judge during golf games, thereby acquiring status as an independent and gaining access to his controlling interest of Hughes tool co. He quickly bought out the rest of his family members, who agreed to the sale only if Hughes finished college and got married. Howard obliged but soon dropped out of Rice university, moved to Hollywood, hired an executive (Noah Dietrich) to run the tool company and began seeing other women, predominantly silent screen star Billie Dove.

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Legend holds that when all of the professional pilots refused to attempt a particular stunt for the 1930s film Hell’s Angels (a low altitude dive past a camera tower) Hughes stepped in and flew it himself. He got the shot but couldn’t pull out. He crashed just as the pilots had predicted. The first people on the scene of the wreck found the crumpled bi-plane empty and followed a trail of blood to a nearby hanger. There they found a battered Hughes babbling about his golf game. He collapsed into unconsciousness with a skull fracture. He came to later in a hospital jumped out of the bed and ran out the door, much to the shock of the attendants. Howard kept the propeller from the wrecked bi-plane as a macabre reminder of this brush with death.

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14 Jul 1936 — Howard Hughes, wealthy sportsman and speed flyer, is shown here as he was booked on a suspicion of negligent homicide by Det. Lieut. Tom Sketchley (right), following a traffic accident in which Gabe S. Meyer, a pedestrian, was assertedly struck and killed by Hughes’ automobile. Hughes was released on his own recognizance.

On the day of the accident Hughes was out driving with one of his many young lady friends. Hughes pushed her into the crowd before the police showed up. Originally a witness stated that Howard was driving at unsafe speeds, and that the pedestrian that was struck was standing in a safety zone. By the time of the court hearing, the same witness stated that Hughes was driving at safe speeds, and that the pedestrian struck had stepped out of the safe zone, and in front of Howard’s car.

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1947, Long Beach, California, USA — Howard Hughes, designer and builder of the “Hercules”, world’s largest airplane, is shown (left) about to enter the mammoth hull of the flying boat at the Long Beach graving dock where the great plane is being made ready for test flight. The shirt-sleeved man with Hughes is Joe Petrale, assistant director of service and flight. The eight-engined plane will fly sometime this year. So far it has cost more than $20,000,000. The tail area alone is three times that of the wing of a Liberator Bomber.

An engineer at Hughes Aircraft  stated that Hughes was constantly sneaking around trying to observe the scientists unnoticed– however the stench from his old tennis shoes he refused to change usually gave him away!

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07 Nov 1947, Washington, DC, USA — Smiling Howard Hughes chats with reporters as he arrived in Washington early this morning prepared to resume his battle with the Senate War Investigating Subcommittee probing his wartime contracts.  Americans were so impressed by Hughes taking on the Senate that a brief Hughes for President campaign was launched by his fans.

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4/6/1976 Houston, TX:  The body of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes is rushed to a waiting hearse at Methodist Hospital after an autopsy revealed that Hughes had died of kidney failure. Hughes will be buried in the family plot at Glenwood Cemetery in Houston.

Sadly in the final years of his life the Mormon workers Hughes surrounded himself with for protection had become his greatest threat. They took full advantage of his declined mental and physical health. Though he attempted rehabilitation and attempted to contact old friends, the Mormons kept him doped up, secluded and bed ridden, moving from the Bahamas to Mexico under the false pretense that his supply of codeine had dried up. His “aides” stole money by the fistful and even persuaded him to sell his family legacy, Hughes tool co. renaming his remaining assets the Summa corporation (To which Hughes replied “what the hell is summa?”) When informed that Hughes had taken a turn for the worse, one of Howard’s many staff doctors sent word that he was going to a party, and would come in a few days. Finally as the gravity of the situation set in a local doctor in Mexico was summoned. He was shocked by the condition of richest man in the world, who at 6’4 tall weighed only 90lbs. Howard Hughes, covered in sores and needle marks was comatose and starving to death. The doctor told the aides that Hughes needed immediate medical attention. Had he gotten it, he may have recovered. Instead, he was put on a plane to Houston, at some point during this flight, one of the aides injected a lethal dose of narcotics into the comatose emaciated billionaire. He died in the air. Though the doctor in Mexico requested criminal investigations, none of these aides have been successfully prosecuted for the role they played in the death of Howard Hughes.

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Picture of spruce goose taken in 1982. It was actually made mostly out of birch using the dura-mould process. This consisted of layering 1/32 inch sheets of wood by steaming them into shape and gluing them ontop of each other alternating the direction of the grain of the wood.

After Hughes died nobody knew what to do with the world’s largest plane. It was originally destined to be cut up and chunks sent to museums around America. It was saved from demolition when a company bought it for an open air display next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. It now lives indoors with a fresh coat of silver paint at the Oregon Evergreen Aviation Museum.

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