Census records can help us learn more about many of the people aboard the LZ-129 Hindenburg when it burst into flames on May 6, 1937. Under the Census Bureau's 72-Year Rule, individual census records are made available to the public 72 years after the census is taken. Some victims of the disaster who lived in the United States were enumerated in the 1930 and earlier censuses, while some survivors can be found in the 1940 and 1950 census records available through the National Archives and Records Administration.

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uftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH built the rigid passenger airship Hindenburg (LZ 129) between 1931 and 1936 at its facility in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Measuring approximately 803 feet long and 135 feet in diameter, the Hindenburg was the longest aircraft of any type at the time and remains one of the largest aircraft ever built. Constructed with an aluminum-alloy frame covered by treated cotton fabric, the 242-ton airship was held aloft by approximately 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen contained in 16 gas cells. Four diesel engines powered the airship to speeds of up to approximately 85 miles per hour. Completed at the height of the Great Depression, passengers nevertheless eagerly paid approximately $450 for a one-way ticket—more than $8,750 in 2022 dollars—for the 2- to 3-day voyage between Frankfurt and Lakehurst. Sleeping quarters were spartan, consisting of private cabins with cots or bunk beds and a shared bathroom, but the airship's other amenities rivaled the finest ocean liners. Passengers had a selection of gourmet meals, including continental breakfasts and dinners that featured duck, goose, lamb, beef, and salmon. Cruising 700 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, passengers enjoyed sightseeing from the airship's promenade deck, reading a book or newspaper in the reading room, or drinking cocktails while a lightweight aluminum piano played in the lounge. Passengers could even smoke a cigar or cigarette in the Hindenburg's smoking room—a specially designed, pressurized room that prevented leaking hydrogen from entering and was separated from the rest of the ship by a double-door airlock.

Following test flights in March 1936, the airship departed Germany on its first roundtrip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 31, and its first trip to New Jersey's Naval Air Station Lakehurst on May 6, 1936. Between transatlantic trips, Germany's Nazi government ordered the zeppelin to participate in a number of propaganda flights, including a flyover of Berlin's Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Summer Olympics.

In 1937, Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei contracted with American Airlines to connect Naval Air Station Lakehurst with Newark Airport and American Airlines' nationwide network. Travelers could board an overnight "sleeper" flight from San Francisco, California, to New Jersey, board Hindenburg for the transatlantic crossing, and arrive in Frankfurt 67 hours after their journey began. Following the airship's first flight of the 1937 travel season—a round trip between Frankfurt and Rio de Janeiro—the Hindenburg departed the Frankfurt airport for Lakehurst on May 3, with 36 passengers and 61 crew members aboard. After crossing the English Channel, the Hindenburg fought strong headwinds that slowed its crossing of the North Atlantic Ocean. The airship passed St. John's, Newfoundland on May 5. Thousands gazed skyward as the massive, torpedo-shaped airship lumbered over Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City, New York, on May 6. Although delayed further by thunderstorms and windy conditions in Ocean County, New Jersey, Naval Air Station Lakehurst cleared the Hindenburg to land at 7:00pm.

The Hindenburg arrived at the Naval Air Station's landing site at 7:09 p.m., but maneuvered around the field as it waited for the ground crew to complete their preparations. At 7:21 p.m., the zeppelin's crew dropped lines to the ground crew 295 feet below. Once attached to the airfield's mooring mast, the ground crew would use a winching system to lower the Hindenburg to the ground and hold it fast as passengers disembarked.

At 7:25 p.m., witnesses on the ground reported seeing a flame or spark near one of the Hindenburg's tail fins. Motion picture and still photographers quickly turned their cameras skyward as an enormous ball of fire engulfed the airship's stern. In seconds, flames spread across Hindenburg, fed by the millions of cubic feet of hydrogen gas stored within the zeppelin's frame. Crashing into the mooring mast and airfield tail first, passengers and crew leapt from windows and the ground crew ran for their lives. Reporting for Chicago, Illinois, radio station WLS, journalist Herbert Morrison's eyewitness account of the tragedy is still regarded as one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio journalism:

"The ship is riding majestically toward us like some great feather. Riding as it was mighty, mighty proud of the place it’s playing in the world’s aviation. The ship is no doubt bustling with activities. It's practically standing still now. They've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship, and it's been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again. The rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it, just enough to keep it from. 

It burst into flame! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! This is terrible! This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world! It’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentleman . . . the smoke and the flames now. And the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity!"

In less than 40 seconds, the Hindenburg had been reduced to a smoldering heap of collapsed metal airframe and debris. Plumes of black smoke poured into the sky as diesel fuel burned. Of the 97 people aboard the Hindenburg, 13 passengers and 22 crew members died. One member of the naval air station's ground crew—Allen Hagaman—was also killed by the falling airship. Nearly all the surviving passengers and crew had been injured. Families, friends, journalists, and airfield staff were left speechless by the tragedy. In the days that followed, horrified moviegoers sobbed as they watched newsreels of the first major aviation disaster captured on film. Many ignition source theories have been proposed in the decades since the disaster, including sabotage, lightning, static electricity, and an engine backfire, but none have been conclusively proven.

You can learn more about the Hindenburg and the United States in the 1930s using census data and records. For example:

• The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, field office was responsible for processing immigrant arrivals at the Hindenburg's Lakehurst port of entry. These records—including those for the ill-fated May 3–6, 1937, flight—are available from the National Archives and Records Administration and can also be accessed free of charge at the Church of Latter Day Saints Genealogy Website. Among the "Alien Passengers" arriving at Naval Air Station Lakehurst aboard the Hindenburg on May 6, 1937, were members of the Doehner family. Mathilde Doehner and her sons Walter and Werner survived the disaster, but her husband Hermann and 14-year old daughter Irene perished. [When Werner Doehner died in 2019 in Laconia, New Hampshire, the 90-year-old retired electrical engineer was the last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster.] Otto Ernst, aged 77, died in the fire, but his wife Elsa survived. She was hospitalized for more than 2 weeks before returning to Germany—by ocean liner—on May 22, 1937. Swedish journalist Birger Brinck planned to travel to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to interview Pennsylvania's governor and fly back to Lakehurst for the Hindenburg's flight back to Germany. Moments before disaster struck, he returned to his cabin to retrieve his camera to film the airship's landing. Brinck was one of the last victims to be identified.

• Many of the Hindenburg's American passengers participated in the 1930 Census. For example, Ferdinand Lamont Belin, Jr., was returning to the United States aboard the Hindenburg after studying in Paris, France. He survived the disaster after jumping from a window while his parents watched from the airfield below. Chicago native Burtis Dolan served with General John J. Pershing in Mexico in 1916 and France during World War I. Although Dolan promised his wife he would not fly on his European business trip, he wrote in an unposted letter found in his pocket that he could not pass up the opportunity to return to the United States aboard the Hindenburg. Dolan survived the fire, but died soon after at a hospital. Food importer and exporter Moritz Feibusch, who was born in East Prussia, immigrated to the United States as a young man. He survived the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, worked as a dry goods purchaser, and eventually opened his own San Francisco grocery brokerage. Returning from an annual trip to Europe aboard the Hindenburg, Feibusch prepared a number of postcards informing family and friends of his arrival aboard the airship before the disaster. His body was found among the wreckage soon after the flames were extinguished. John Pannes was an agent with the transatlantic shipping company Hamburg-American North German Lloyd Line. Following a trip to Europe, the flight home aboard the Hindenburg was a much anticipated highlight for John Pannes and his wife Emma. When the airship burst into flames, John ignored pleas to jump from a nearby window, choosing instead to search for his wife who had returned to their cabin for a jacket. They died together as their youngest son Hilgard watched in horror from the airfield's viewing platform.

• The Hindenburg disaster occurred as it was mooring to the ground at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. The naval air station was home to the U.S. Navy's rigid airship program and housed three of the service's four airships—USS Shenandoah, USS Los Angeles, and USS Akron. Incorporated in 1921, Lakehurst's population was 947 in 1930 and 827 in 1940. The Ocean County, New Jersey, borough has a population of 2,636 today.

• The Hindenburg was filled with 7 million cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen gas. Although hydrogen is no longer used in rigid airship or blimps, it remains a vital industrial gas used to manufacture fertilizer and solvents, power electric fuel cells, produce rocket fuel, cool electric generators and medical equipment, and process foods like "hydrogenated" cooking oil. In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Survey of Manufactures reported that the Industrial gas manufacturing industry (NAICS 325120)—which included production of hydrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, helium, nitrogen, etc.—had sales, value of shipments, or revenue of more than $10.3 billion in 2020. Industrial gas manufacturing establishments employed 12,097 employees who earned more than $1 billion annually.

• Following the Hindenburg disaster, the zeppelin's owners—Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei—hoped to convert their airship fleet to much safer helium gas. The United States was the world's leading supplier of the lighter-than air gas, but the Helium Control Act of 1927 banned its export, grounding Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei's planned conversion. The fate of Germany's zeppelin fleet was sealed following the outbreak of World War II. In March 1940, Nazi Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Goering ordered the nation's zeppelin fleet scrapped so their aluminum alloy frames could be reused for fighter aircraft production. Today, the United States continues to maintain the world's largest helium reserve, with more than 1 billion cubic meters of the inert gas stored at a Bureau of Land Management facility in Amarillo, Texas.

  The United States has long had a substantial population of people born in Germany or reporting German ancestry. Seven years before the Hindenburg disaster, the 1930 Census reported that 1,608,814 of the nation's 123,202,624 people were born in Germany. Three years after the disaster, the 1940 Census found that of the nation's 132,164,569 people, 1,237,772 foreign-born White residents had been born in Germany. In 2019, the American Community Survey (ACS) estimated that 43,038,145 of the nation's 324,697,795 residents reported German ancestry.

  The Census Bureau collected information about country of birth long before 1910. The 1910 Census, however, included a comprehensive inquiry about mother tongue. In that year, 2,501,181 foreign-born White residents had been born in Germany, while 8,817,271 people in the foreign White stock reported German as their mother tongue. German was the second most common mother tongue reported by the foreign White stock, after English and Celtic languages, which included 10,037,420 people. It was followed by Latin and Greek languages—which included Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Greek—with 4,279,560 people; and Slavic and Lettic languages—including Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, and others—with 3,240,467 people. The Census Bureau collected mother-tongue information through the 1970 Census, while questions about language spoken at home were included in later censuses and surveys. Beginning in 2005, the American Community Survey began collecting language-spoken-at-home data. Data collected by the ACS between 2009 and 2013 showed that 60,361,574 people spoke a language other than English at home. Among people age 5 and over, English was spoken at home by 231,122,908 people, followed by Spanish (37,458,470), French (1,253,560), and German (1,063,275).

• Long before hydrogen-filled zeppelins crossed the Atlantic Ocean, daring aviators were climbing thousands of feet into the sky aboard hydrogen-filled balloons. The first manned balloon flight in the United States was made by Jean-Pierre Blanchard in 1793. With President George Washington and future presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe in attendance, Blanchard ascended more than a mile above his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, launching point and landed 15 miles away in Deptford, New Jersey. Nearly 170 years later, Paul "Ed" Yost made the first free flight of a modern hot air balloon in Bruning, Nebraska. For his October 22, 1960, flight, Yost used propane burners to heat air inside a lightweight nylon balloon. As the air inside warmed, the balloon rose and stayed in the air for 1 hour and 35 minutes. Thanks to Yost's invention of modern hot air ballooning, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Reno, Nevada, and other cities attract thousands of visitors to colorful hot air balloon festivals and races.

• Following the Hindenburg disaster, much of the airship's valuable aluminum alloy frame was returned to Germany, where it was reused to produce World War II fighter aircraft and bombers. A small memorial remembers the disaster at the landing site that is now part of Lakehurst Maxfield Field. An outline of the Hindenburg is marked at the crash site where Lakehurst residents, military personnel, and dignitaries hold annual ceremonies to remember the disaster's victims.

• According to the February 15, 1938, issue of American Aviation, the Air Transport Association estimated that 1,102,000 passengers flew on flights with segments in the United States in 1937. More recently, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that 1,057,645,399 passengers had flight segments in the United States in 2019—averaging 2,897,659 passengers every day. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in dramatic reductions in air passenger traffic in 2020, with just 574,409,405 passengers traveling for the year and 1,569,425 each day.

On May 1, 1893, President Grover Cleveland opened the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

The 1893 World's Fair showcased Chicago, Illinois, just 22 years after the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. Between May 1 and October 30, 1893, approximately 27 million fairgoers were awed by a huge variety of exhibits from around the world.

Featured among the U.S. Department of the Interior's Census Office exhibit was Herman Hollerith's display of the electric processing and tabulating machines he invented. Fairgoers watched as Census Bureau employees processed 1890 Census data recorded on paper punch cards. The exhibit proved so popular that fair organizers awarded Hollerith a bronze medal.

Three decades later, the Census Bureau earned a gold medal for its exhibit at the Philadelphia World's Fair that opened on May 31, 1926.

During the 1926 Philadelphia World's Fair, the Census Bureau displayed a population clock, maps and tables displaying census data, and the tabulating machines used to count more than 106 million people during the 1920 Census.

In the decade before the Hindenburg disaster, aviators made the first solo airplane flights between the United States and Europe.

On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to complete a solo transatlantic crossing, flying his Spirit of St. Louis between Mineola, New York, and Paris, France.

Lindbergh became an international star but retreated from the public eye after the 1932 kidnapping and murder of his 20-month-old son. After the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh sought to return to active military service, but the Roosevelt administration declined to reinstate his commission. He instead served as a civilian technical adviser and consultant and flew combat missions in the Pacific. After the war, he lived in Darien, Connecticut, and spent his final years in Hawaii, dying at his Maui home on August 26, 1974.

Five years after Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. After taking off from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, Canada, on May 20, 1932, she arrived at Culmore, Ireland, 15 hours later on May 21.

Earhart's aviation feats culminated with plans for the longest circumnavigation of the globe ever attempted—a 29,000-mile flight along the Earth's equator with navigator Fred Noonan. Beginning on May 21, 1937, Earhart flew from Oakland, California, eastward across the United States before reaching Miami, Florida, where she officially began her second attempt to circumnavigate the globe on June 1. She subsequently stopped at cities in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Earhart left Papua New Guinea on July 2, 1937, but never reached her destination at Howland Island, now part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.