The history of planes and unpowered aircrafts from the late 1890s to the 1930s, stored in the Russian museums, is reconstructed based on a variety of sources (recollections of the museum staff, memoir literature, internet data, and materials from the author’s personal archive). These aircrafts include O. Lilienthal’s glider, the first glider in history, the first Soviet all-metal aircraft ANT-2, the ornithopter created by a famous avant-garde artist V. Ye. Tatlin, V. P. Chkalov’s personal plane, and other valuable exhibits.