1895 – Birth of Leslie Leroy Irvin, American stuntman and early parachutist; he will make the first free-fall parachute jump in 1919.
1919 – The Schneider Trophy race is flown at Bournemouth, England and while an Italian Savoia S.13 is the only finisher, its pilot is disqualified for missing a turning buoy. When judges ask Guido Janello to complete another lap, he runs out of fuel.
1952 – During a dogfight between two piston-engined U.S. Marine Corps Vought F4U Corsair fighter-bombers from the escort aircraft carrier U.S.S. Sicily and several Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 jet fighters, Corsair pilot Capt. Jesse G. Folmar shoots down a MiG-15 before being shot down himself; he survives and is rescued. It is the only Corsair victory over a MiG-15 during the Korean War.
1956 – First flight of the North American F-107 (shown above), a U.S. Air Force tactical fighter-bomber prototype based on the F-100 Super Sabre.
1976 – A mid-air collision between British Airways Flight 476, a Hawker Siddeley Trident, and Inex-Adria Flight 330, a Douglas DC-9, near Zagreb, Yugoslavia, kills all 176 people on board both aircraft; it remains British Airways’ only fatal accident.
1993 – Boeing finishes production of its 1,000th 747 jumbo-jet airliner, more than 25 years after the 747 program was launched.
