1893 – Birth of Juan Pablo Aldasoro, Mexican aviation pioneer and aircraft designer.
1939 – First flight of the Bristol Bolingbroke (shown), a maritime patrol aircraft used by the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Built by Fairchild-Canada, it is a variant of the Bristol Blenheim MkIV bomber.
1954 – A Tupolev Tu-4 bomber of the USSR drops a 40-kiloton atomic weapon from 26,000 feet above Totskoye range, near Orenburg, 900 miles from Moscow. It is a test of the performance of military hardware and soldiers in the event of a nuclear war.
1984 – Joe Kittinger, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a USAF command pilot, begins the first solo transatlantic balloon flight, from Carbon, Maine, to Savona, Italy.
1986 – Death of Maurice Claisse, French aviator and record setter, World War II fighter pilot and test pilot.
1999 – Britannia Airways Flight 226A, a Boeing 757, veers off the runway at Girona, Catalonia, in Spain while landing in a thunderstorm and comes to rest in a field, broken apart in two places; 43 on board are injured, two seriously, but a passenger initially diagnosed as “lightly injured” dies five days later of unsuspected internal injuries.
