1904 – Birth of Olive Ann Beech (nee Mellor), U.S. aviation pioneer and businesswoman; she later founded the Beech Aircraft Co. with husband Walter Herschel Beech.
1932 – Lewis Alonzo Yancey sets an autogiro altitude record of 21,500 feet in a Pitcairn PCA-2 (shown above).
1942 – First and only Royal Canadian Air Force air combat in the North American theatre; takes place when an RCAF Curtiss Kittyhawk destroys a Japanese Nakajima A6M2-N over Kiska, Alaska.
1975 – A flight of four Lockheed F-104G Starfighters of the Italian Air Force crashes in formation into a field near the village of Ralingen near the border with Luxembourg, shortly after take-off from Bitburg Air Base; all four pilots perish.
1997 – Death of Masaaki Shimakawa, Japanese Navy World War II fighter ace.
2010 – Delta Connection Flight 4951, a Canadair CRJ900, on a flight from Atlanta, Ga., to White Plains, N.Y., makes a successful emergency landing at JFK International Airport in New York City. The plane’s right landing gear would not deploy and the right wing dragged along the runway during the landing.