With such broad reach across sciences and across scales, how do we make progress in understanding the space environment around us? On Earth, lightning flashes have important physical processes that occur on microsecond timescales, and they have measurable effects throughout the depth of the atmosphere that are still being discovered. The solar wind, probably inconceivable 100 years ago, literally and figuratively impacts every aspect of our solar system. This session will present, within an historical framework, a series of both ordinary and brilliant discoveries upon which much of space physics and atmospheric electricity are based.