The first Aviator sunglasses I ever noticed were my father’s. He seemed to constantly be looking for them, often forgetting they were right there in the front pocket of his dress shirt. As a young child, I would play with the gold metal frames that seemed enormous in my small hands, rubbing the smooth lens with my thumb until I found the break with the brand’s etching at the top corner. The story of how the word Ray-Ban found its place on that lens is interesting.

It starts in 1920 with Shorty Schroeder, a pilot in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The standard gear for pilots at the time included fur-lined goggles accompanied by a hooded leather cap. Schroeder set a record by taking a biplane above 33,000 feet on a test flight; his goggles fogged, and he had no choice but to pull them off. His vision blurred, and his eyes were frozen, but he managed to land the plane. His fellow test pilot, Lieutenant John Macready, extracted him from the plane, but the image of his friend’s eyes stayed with him. In the 1930s, Macready partnered with Bausch and Lomb, a company specializing in eye health products, to develop teardrop-shaped, green-tinted glasses, designed to ban the sun’s intense rays, specifically for aviators like himself and his colleagues. The glasses were released to the military in 1936 and patented as the Ray-Ban Aviator in 1939.

As World War II began, the Aviator’s use within the military remained widespread both in the air and on the ground. When General Douglas MacArthur landed on the beach in the Philippines in 1944, he was wearing a pair. The moment was captured by numerous photojournalists that day and is said to be one of the main reasons the glasses became so popular. Post-war, they were worn by celebrities like Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Tom Cruise, and Gloria Steinem. Today they’re still one of the most popular sunglasses in the world, continuing to shield their wearers from harmful rays.

How can you spot an authentic pair of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses? The etching on the lens is one way, along with the frame’s signature construction. They should be made from a thin metal with a double nose bridge, and the teardrop lenses should extend over the eye socket, hiding a good amount of the wearer’s face from view—the perfect accessory for a celebrity attempting to dodge paparazzi while being not only cool but fashionable.