1922 – Death of Godfrey DeCourcelles Chevalier, pioneering U.S. Navy aviator, as a result of injuries sustained in an airplane crash two days before.
1930 – Birth of Edward White, American astronaut and Purple Heart and Congressional Space Medal of Honor recipient; he was the first American to conduct a spacewalk.
1932 – Amy Johnson begins an attempt to break the UK-Cape Town, South Africa, speed record in a de Havilland Puss Moth; she does so four days later by shaving 11 hours off the record.
1935 – First flight of the Noorduyn Norseman (shown above), a Canadian single-engine bush plane designed to operate from unimproved surfaces; it is the first all-Canadian designed bush aircraft.
1981 – The Space Shuttle Columbia completes its second mission, making it the first reuse of a manned orbital space vehicle.
2009 – English Electric Lightning T5 ZU-BEX crashes during an air show in South Africa after a hydraulic failure, killing the pilot.
