1893 – Birth of Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer, prominent German aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation.
1911 – Eugene B. Ely makes the first landing by an aircraft on a ship when he flies his Curtiss Model D pusher biplane from Selfridge Field near San Francisco to a specially prepared wooden deck on the stern of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania.
1917 – William E. Boeing’s Pacific Aero Products Co. is renamed the Boeing Airplane Co.
1942 – U.S. Army Air Force Col. James Doolittle (shown above) leads the first U.S. attack on the Japanese mainland just months after Pearl Harbor; he leads sixteen North American B-25 Mitchells flying from the USS Hornet against Tokyo in what comes to be known as the Doolittle Raid.
1965 – Death of Charles Marie Joseph Leon Nuville, French World War I fighter ace and World War II officer.
1991 – Eastern Air Lines is dissolved after 64 years of operation. Many of its remaining assets are parceled out to American and Continental airlines.
