1906    Traian Vuia flies a heavier-than-air aircraft for 20 meters at 1 meter altitude.

1906    Alberto Santos-Dumont flies his 14-bis aircraft at Bagatelle, France for the first time successfully.

1911    First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.

1912    Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

1913    Igor Sikorsky becomes the first man to pilot a four-engine aircraft.

1928    Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean (she was a passenger; Wilmer Stutz was the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic).

1944    World War II: The "Big Week" began with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.

1947    In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.

1983    The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.

2006    Scotland Yard disrupts a major terrorist plot to destroy aircraft traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States.