On July 2, 1912, the thousands of visitors to Atlantic City watched in horror one of the greatest aviation disasters to date. Melvin Vaniman, with a crew of four, was completing a test flight in his 258-foot-long airship Akron. The airship was the first to be built by the Goodyear Corp., and Vaniman’s proposed transatlantic flight was sponsored by the company’s president, Frank Seiberling.