1912 – The world’s first seaplane competition, held in Monaco, is won by a Henri Farman biplane flown by Belgian Jules Fischer, one of only two non-French pilots of the eight starters.
1944 – Death of Mineichi Koga, Japanese admiral and commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy‘s Combined Fleet;
1951 – Royal Canadian Air Force Flight Lt. Joseph Auguste Omer Levesque (shown in cockpit), World War II and Korean War ace, becomes the first Canadian to shoot down a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 in the Korean War, and the first Commonwealth pilot to score a victory in jet-to-jet combat.
1957 – Birth of Patrick Graham Forrester, U.S. Army officer, helicopter and test pilot, as well as NASA astronaut.
1990 – First flight of the Robinson R44, an American four-place light helicopter.
2010 – A Grumman E-2 Hawkeye aircraft of the U.S. Navy crashes in the Arabian Sea while returning to the USS Eisenhower during Operation Enduring Freedom; the pilot is killed. Navy officials decline to speculate on the cause of the crash, but a Navy website lists it as “an engine oil leak.”
