1867 – Englishmen James William Butler and Edmund Edwards make the first delta-wing airplane designs. They take out patents for both monoplanes and biplanes to be propelled by jets of steam, compressed air or gas.
1895 – Birth of Robert Alexander “Bob” Little, Australian WWI fighter ace.
1918 – The first attack by aircraft flying from a carrier flight deck is made when seven Sopwith Camels launch from the converted large cruiser H.M.S. Furious. For the loss of one man, the British destroy two German zeppelins and a captive balloon during the Tondern raid (officially designated Operation F.7).
1963 – Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 (shown above) to a record altitude of 347,800 feet on X-15 Flight 90; it qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.
1989 – United Airlines Flight 232, a Douglas DC-10, crashes in Sioux City, Iowa; 112 die but due to extraordinary efforts by the pilot and crew, 184 on board survive.
2010 – Death of David Ronald de Mey Warren, an Australian scientist best known for inventing and developing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (also known as FDR, CVR, and “the black box”).
