1891 – Birth of Frederick Libby, first American ace of World War I.
1927 – Death of Paul Wilhelm Bäumer, German World War I ace, who dies in a crash near Copenhagen while test flying a Rohrbach Rofix fighter.
1941 – Luftwaffe ace Werner Mölders shoots down two Soviet aircraft, raising his victory total to 101. He becomes the first fighter pilot to claim 100 victories.
1954 – Boeing’s 707 prototype, the model 367-80 (shown above), made its maiden flight from Renton Field, south of Seattle, Wash.
1970 – The Tupolev Tu-144 exceeds Mach 2 in level flight, the first commercial aircraft to do so.
1996 – A Belgian Lockheed C-130H Hercules crashes at Eindhoven Air Base in the Netherlands after bird strikes stopped three engines. A total of 34 people die and seven are seriously injured.
