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1802 – Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the first parachute descent in England, jumping from a balloon over London. 1945 – Birth of Bjarni Valdimar Tryggvason,  Icelandic-born Canadian engineer, Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and NRC-CSA astronaut. 1953 – North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok defects, bringing his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 with him to Seoul and collecting a $100,000 (U.S.) reward. 1967 – First flight […]

1912 – Igor Sikorsky made a 90-minute night flight in his S-8 Malyutka, a two-seat biplane trainer. 1916 – Jan Nagórski (Ivan Nagurski) performs the first loop in a flying boat; the aircraft is a Grigorovich M-9 (type shown). 1930 – Birth of Thomas Patten Stafford, an American former U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. 1952 – Death […]

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 […]

1912 – Jules Vedrines wins the Gordon Bennett Trophy by flying a world-record speed of 108 mph in his Monocoque Deperdussin monoplane (shown with crew) at Chicago, Ill. 1929 – First flight of the de Havilland DH.80A Puss Moth, a British three-seater high-wing monoplane. 1973 – Death of Sergei Konstantinovich Tumansky, Soviet aircraft engine designer. […]

1909 – British Army Aeroplane No. 1 (1A replica shown), with builder Samuel Franklin Cody at the controls, makes a sustained flight of more than an hour around Laffan’s Plain (Farnborough), travelling about 46 miles in 1 hour, 3 minutes; it is the first recorded cross-country flight in the UK. 1912 – Birth of James […]