1825 – Birth of Alexander Fedorovich Mozhayskiy, Russian naval officer, aviation pioneer, researcher and designer of heavier-than-aircraft.
1931 – Australian National Airways Avro 618 Ten (a licensed built Fokker F-VII) “Southern Cloud” disappears in poor weather. The crash site is in heavily timbered mountainous terrain within the Snowy Mountains about 16 miles east of the direct Sydney–Melbourne route; it is discovered 27 years later. All eight aboard perish.
1943 – Death of Cornelia Clark Fort, an aviator in the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), killed in her Vultee BT-13 Valiant she was ferrying after a mid-air collision. She is the first female pilot in American history to die on active duty.
1981 – First flight of the Dornier Do-228, a German twin-turboprop STOL utility aircraft.
1996 – Tupolev and NASA begin joint research into civil supersonic transports using a refurbished Tupolev Tu-144 (shown).
2012 – The world’s largest paper airplane “Desert Eagle” is launched from a helicopter over the Arizona desert. The 800-pound paper airplane sailed at an altitude of 2,703 feet and speed of 98 miles per hour.
