1900 – French aeronaut Count Henri de La Vaulx sets a non-stop, long-distance balloon flight record when he lands in Kiev after a 1,200-mile, 35-hour flight from Paris.
1933 – A United Airlines Boeing 247D is destroyed by sabotage near Chesterton, Ind.; it is the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.
1950 – First flight of Tthe Boulton Paul P.111 (also called Boulton Paul BP.111), a British experimental aircraft designed to explore the characteristics of tailless deltas.
1966 – Birth of Zhai Zhigang, fighter pilot and officer in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and a CNSA astronaut; he later became the first Chinese citizen to conduct a spacewalk.
1978 – Death of Ernst Zindel, German engineer and designer of the Junkers Ju-52 (Luftwaffe version shown).
2011 – Flying a modified Yakovlev Yak-3U (a Soviet World War II fighter aircraft) powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-2000 engine, William Whiteside sets an official international speed record for piston-engined aircraft in the under-6,615-pound category, reaching 407 mph over a 1.9-mile course at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
