1891 – Birth of Carl Andrew “Tooey” Spaatz, American World War I pilot, World War II general and first chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force.
1927 – Lester Maitland and co-pilot Albert Francis Hegenberger takes off their U.S. Army Fokker C-2 “Bird of Paradise” from Oakland, Calif., to Honolulu for the first non-stop flight between the U.S. and Hawaii.
1945 – First flight of the Cessna 120, two-seat cabin monoplane with a strut-braced, high-set wing.
1955 – Jean Moire lands a Bell 47 helicopter on top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, at an altitude of 15,772 feet.
1957 – In two separate accidents, a pair of newly delivered Lockheed U-2s of the SAC’s 4028th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron based at Laughlin Air Force Base, Del Rio, Texas, are lost on the same day.
1998 – Death of U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Marion Eugene Carl (shown above), American World War II fighter pilot, record-setting test pilot, and a notable naval aviator; he also was the first Marine Corps ace in WWII and the first Marine to fly a helicopter.
