Da Vinci notebook lands at National Air and Space Museum

As part of the Year of Italian Culture in the United States, Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex on the Flight of Birds" will make its debut appearance on American soil at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. The notebook, on loan from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, Italy, dates back to approximately 1505 and contains da Vinci's schemes, scribblings and sketches about bird flight and -- though he was about 400 years early to the party -- the possibility of mechanical aviation.