1915 – Royal Flying Corps Capt. Lanoe Hawker becomes the first British military aviator to earn the Victoria Cross when he defeats three German two-seat observation aircraft on this day over the Western Front.
1932 – Birth of Paul Joseph Weitz, U.S. Navy pilot and NASA astronaut.
1939 – First flight of the Avro 679 Manchester (shown), a British twin-engine heavy bomber; it is the forerunner to the better-known Avro Lancaster.
1997 – Death of Commander Peter “Hoagy” Carmichael, British fighter pilot with the Royal Navy during and after World War II.
2000 – Air France Flight 4590, an Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde, catches fire after takeoff, crashing and killing all 100 passengers, nine crew and four people on the ground, at Gonesse, France; the only fatal crash of a Concorde, it marks the beginning of the end of Concorde service.
2009 – Celebrating the first cross-Channel flight 100 years after Louis Blériot’s historic journey, Frenchman Edmond Salis repeats the feat in a Bleriot XI replica.
