1887 – Birth of Ruth Bancroft Law, pioneer American aviatrix and the first woman to loop the loop in an airplane as well as the first woman to make a night flight.
1927 – Charles A. Lindbergh lands his Ryan NYP monoplane Spirit of St. Louis (shown above) at Le Bourget, France; he is the first to fly a non-stop solo Atlantic crossing of 3,600 miles in 33 hours, 29 minutes.
1946 – KLM is the first continental European airline to launch scheduled service to New York.
1965 – Death of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, a highly decorated British aviation pioneer and aircraft engineer. His Mosquito, a World War II-era fighter-bomber, has been considered the most versatile warplane ever built.
1977 – An Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde makes a special trip from New York to Paris to mark the 50th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight on the same route in the Spirit of St. Louis; the airliner makes the journey in less than 4 hours.
2011 – Volcano Grímsvötn in Iceland enters in eruption, causing disruption to air travel in Iceland, followed by Greenland, Scotland and Norway and northern Europe in the following days.