1818: The Curtiss R-6 twin-float seaplane becomes the first US-built airplane to operate overseas with American forces at Naval Base 13, Ponta Delgado, in the Azores.
1862: Telescope maker Alvin Clark discovers dwarf companion of Sirius.
1949: Pan Am receives the first Boeing Model 377 Stratocruiser to be delivered.
1957: On the first test flight of the Douglas DC-7B (N8210H), the aircraft collides with a USAF F-89, over Sunland, California. The two DC-7B crewmembers died, and only one of the F-89’s crew safely ejected. The planes hit the ground in a schoolyard, killing 3 more people.
1958: Explorer 1, the first U.S. Earth-orbiting satellite, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch vehicle was an Army Jupiter-C rocket. Explorer 1 orbited the Earth every 115 minutes. Its orbit carried it from a low of about 220 miles to a high of nearly 1,600 miles.
1961: Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2), carrying Ham the Chimp, carries the first hominid into sub-orbit. The flight lasted just over 16 minutes, where Ham operated a lever, as trained, to prove that tasks could be performed in space.
1961: USAF launches Samos spy satellite to replace U-2 flights.
1966: USSR Lunar Soft Lander launched. Luna 9 landed on the lunar surface and retuned the first photographs from the surface.
1970: Mikhail Mil dies, aged 61
1971: Apollo 14 - USA Lunar Manned Lander (January 31 to February 8, 1971) launched. Crew: Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, Stuart A. Roosa. Shepard and Mitchell landed on the moon on February 5, 1971, in the Fra Mauro highlands, located at 3°40' S and longitude 17°28' E. They collected 42.9 kilograms of lunar samples and used a hand-held cart to transport rocks and equipment.
1972: US launches HEOS A-2 for interplanetary observations (396/244,998).
1977: First flight of the Cessna Citation II.
1986: Boeing completes purchase of de Havilland Canada.
2000: Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83, plunged into the Pacific Ocean near Point Mugu, California while preparing to attempt an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and Seattle, killing all 88 people on board. In its final report, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the cause of the accident to be failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew acme nut threads due to insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly by Alaska Airlines. NTSB further determined that the insufficient lubrication resulted from Alaska's extended lubrication and inspection intervals and from the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) approval of those intervals. NTSB also found that the lack of a fail-safe mechanism for the failure of the acme nut threads on the MD-80 design contributed to the accident. This incident, along with the earlier ValuJet crash, led to closer FAA oversight of airline maintenance operations.
2001: JAL Flight 907 and JAL Flight 958 (Boeing 747-400 JA8904 and DC-10-40 JA 8546, respectively) come within 300 feet of one another at a height of 39,000ft over Shizouka, Japan. The error, caused by air traffic control error, forces the 747 to dive in order to avoid a collision. Had they crashed, it might have killed 677 people.
2005: Air Exel ceases operations.
2010: Northwest Airlines ceases to exist upon its merger with Delta Airlines.
