1877 – Birth of François Victor Denhaut, early French aviator and aircraft designer; he also was known as the inventor of flying boats.
1909 – More than a million New Yorkers watch as Wilbur Wright makes a flight at New York City’s Hudson-Fulton celebrations, circling the Statue of Liberty and making a 33-minute flight up and down the Hudson River alongside Manhattan, completing a 42-mile flight and landing at Governor’s Island.
1958 – A BOAC de Havilland Comet 4 makes first the commercial transatlantic crossing by a jet airliner, from London Heathrow Airport to New York via Gander, Newfoundland.
1984 – Sixty-one-year-old Elaine Yadwin lands a Piper Cherokee Warrior II safely in Florida after her husband, the plane’s pilot, dies during the flight.
1992 – El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 freighter, crashes into high-rise apartment buildings in Amsterdam after two of its engines detach from the wing. Forty-three people, including the plane’s crew of 3, are killed. The incident became known as the Bijlmer disaster.
2009 – Death of Günther Rall, German World War II fighter ace (shown above); he was the third most successful fighter ace in history with 275 victories.
