1892 – Birth of José Manuel Sarmento de Beires, Portuguese Army officer and an aviation pioneer; he later flew the first night aerial crossing of the South Atlantic.
1922 – Jimmy Doolittle makes the first cross-country flight across the U.S. in under a day in a de Havilland DH.4; it takes just over 21 hours to fly from Pablo Beach, Fla., to Rockwell Field, Calif., with just a single refueling stop at Kelly Field in Texas.
1936 – Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes are the first women to win the prestigious U.S. coast-to-coast Bendix Trophy race; they make the trip in a Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing.
1946 – Death of Tom Falcon Hazell, Irish World War I fighter ace; he is the fifth most successful British flying ace during the war, and the third most successful Irish-born pilot, as well the only pilot to survive the war from both groups.
1957 – First flight of the Lockheed JetStar (shown above), an American aircraft that becomes the first dedicated business jet to enter service.
2010 – Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise Flight 514, aTupolev Tu-154, suffers a complete electrical failure in flight, but makes a successful emergency landing. All 81 passengers and crew escape uninjured.
