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Natural Sciences     Social Sciences     Humanities     Arts     Applied Arts and Sciences     Recreation      Click on the buttons above for workgroups An encyclopedia project—and more! Welcome to Citizendium, an endeavor to provide free knowledge with the highest standards of writing, reliability, and comprehensiveness. We welcome anyone who wants to share information by writing well-researched and authoritative articles on virtually any subject. Please read through our easy registration procedures, then join us as an Author and perhaps also as a recognised expert Editor. We have 17,529 articles at different stages of development, of which 0 are expert-approved. Our community is collegial and congenial; everyone writes under his or her verified real name. Even this, our home page, can be edited by any Citizen. We welcome anyone who has knowledge, broad or narrow, about any subject. Sign up—we need Authors, and from amongst them, specialist Editors. We prefer new material over improving other sites' work. Students in higher education write here as part of their courses under our Eduzendium initiative. We have a Charter to provide a framework for governance. For more details on partipation, see Why Citizendium?, Myths and Facts and Why We Contribute; to learn more about the history of the project, see the Citizendium article. Follow us on Friendfeed, Twitter (general news; new pages), Facebook or Google+. Join us Join here and start a new article or improve existing ones. See Recent Changes—an overview of articles we are writing now. Get started: How to collaborate | How to format pages Wikipedians are very welcome! Comment on articles nominated for approval. You can discuss any article on its Talk page. From the HOME page you can get started, get technical help, see our policies, and explore our articles and organization in detail. We Need Support From Donations! Please help! We have a continuing need for funds to pay for hosting our servers. See our financial report for complete details. Please make your donations here. See also WatchKnowLearn, a free, non-profit, K-12 educational video website which Citizendium founder Larry Sanger also helped to start.

Some of our finest Approved Articles (0) Developed Articles (1,147) (17,529 total articles) What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. — Henry David Thoreau        —add a quotation about knowledge or writing •Did You Know? Featured Article about The Irvin pin. The eyes have always been red, but there are urban legends about the meanings of other colors. A pin from another company, possibly Switlik or Standard Parachute. This style is common in catalogs and auctions of military memorabilia. The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. After authentication by the parachute maker, applicants receive a membership certificate and a distinctive lapel pin. History Before April 28, 1919 there was no way for a pilot to jump out of a plane and then to deploy a parachute. Parachutes were stored in a canister attached to the aircraft, and if the plane was spinning, the parachute could not deploy. Film industry stuntman Leslie Irvin developed a parachute that the pilot could deploy at will from a back pack using a ripcord. He joined the Army Air Corps parachute research team, and in April 1919 he successfully tested his design, though he broke his ankle during the test. Irvin was the first person to make a premeditated free fall jump from an airplane. He went on to form the Irving Airchute Company, which became a large supplier of parachutes. (A clerical error resulted in the addition of the "g" to Irvin and this was left in place until 1970, when the company was unified under the title Irvin Industries Incorporated.) The Irvin brand is now a part of Airborne Systems, a company with operations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.[1]. An early brochure [2] of the Irvin Parachute Company credits William O'Connor 24 August 1920 at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio as the first person to be saved by an Irvin parachute, but this feat was unrecognised. On 20 October 1922 Lieutenant Harold R. Harris, chief of the McCook Field Flying Station, jumped from a disabled Loening W-2A monoplane fighter. Shortly after, two reporters from the Dayton Herald, realising that there would be more jumps in future, suggested that a club should be formed. 'Caterpillar Club' was suggested because the parachute canopy was made of silk, and because caterpillars have to climb out of their cocoons and fly away. Harris became the first member, and from that time forward any person who jumped from a disabled aircraft with a parachute became a member of the Caterpillar Club. Other famous members include General James Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh and (retired) astronaut John Glenn. In 1922 Leslie Irvin agreed to give a gold pin to every person whose life was saved by one of his parachutes. By 1945 the number of members with the Irvin pins had grown to over 34,000. In addition to the Irvin Air Chute Company and its successors, other parachute manufacturers have also issued caterpillar pins for successful jumps. Irvin/Irving's successor, Airborne Systems Canada, still provides pins to people who made their jump long ago and are just now applying for membership. Another of these is Switlik Parachute Company, which though it no longer makes parachutes, still issues pins. Footnotes