1894 – Birth of Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin, Soviet aircraft designer who later founds the Ilyushin aircraft design bureau.
1936 – The first successful bail-out from a rotary-winged aircraft takes place when William H. “Bill” McAvoy and engineer John Wheatley abandon their Pitcairn YG-2 Autogiro when the rotor fails.
1941 – The first powered flight of the Heinkel He 280, a German fighter prototype; it is the first turbojet-powered fighter in the world.
1954 – Joe DeBona, with a North American P-51C Mustang (shown), sets a transcontinental speed record for piston-engine planes when he flies from Los Angeles, Calif., nonstop to New York’s Idlewild Airport in four hours, 24 minutes and 17 seconds; he averaged 560 mph.
1973 – Death of Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Scottish nobleman and pioneering aviator.
2008 – A privately registered Cessna 501 Citation, carrying five people, crashes into two homes in Farnborough, England, after taking off from a London airport.
