1895 – Birth of Jean Marie Dominique Navarre, French World War I flying ace and test pilot.
1901 – Wilbur Wright achieves a flight of 389 feet at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in the Wright 1901 glider.
1929 – The Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127) begins its circumnavigation of the globe at Lakehurst, N.J.
1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker (shown above), a U.S. strategic bomber and the largest mass-produced piston engine aircraft ever made; it also has the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built (230 feet).
1991 – Death of James Benson Irwin, American test pilot, astronaut and engineer; he served as Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 15, the fourth human lunar landing and was the eighth person to walk on the Moon.
2009 – A Piper Cherokee Lance flying over the Hudson River crashed into a Eurocopter AS350 of Liberty Helicopter Sightseeing Tours, severing the right wing of the airplane and multiple rotor blades from the helicopter near Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken, N.J.; all aboard both craft perish.
