International Skydiving Museum, Fredericksburg

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, the International Skydiving Museum and Hall of Fame is a museum dedicated to the sport of skydiving and the history of parachuting. The story it tells begins with André-Jacques Garnerin, who made the first parachute descent from a balloon over Paris in seventeen ninety-seven, and runs through the military airborne operations of the Second World War, when tens of thousands of paratroopers jumped into combat in Sicily, Normandy, and the Rhine crossings. After the war, surplus parachutes and trained jumpers turned a military skill into a civilian sport.

The museum documents that evolution through equipment, photographs, film, and personal archives. Its Hall of Fame honors jumpers across disciplines, from military pioneers to competitive freefall athletes and BASE jumping innovators.