1912: The Fokker Aviatik G.m.b.H. company is entered in the trade register at Berlin, Germany with a quoted capital of 20,000 marks. The company’s Holland-born founder, Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker, was brought up in Haarlem, the Netherlands and moved to Germany where he developed a passion for aviation before designing his first airplane – the Spider No. 1 – in late 1910.

1913: French aviator Jules Védrines becomes the first pilot to fly over 100 mph, behind the controls of a Deperdussin Monocoque near Pau, France

1925: Geoffrey de Havilland takes off in his newly built D.H.60 Moth G-EBKT, heralding a new age of light aviation.

1928: Australian Bert Hinkler lands at Fanny Bay in Darwin, Australia after 11,000-mile solo flight from England. He is the first to make such a trip, setting four other new records: longest solo flight, longest light plane flight, first nonstop flight from London to Rome and fastest journey from Britain to India.

1965: USSR launches Kosmos 57 into earth orbit (Voskhod Test).

1966: USSR launches Kosmos 110 with Veterok and Ugolek, 1st 2-dog crew.

1974: An unemployed tire salesman named Samuel Byck attempts to hijack a Delta Air Lines DC-9 at Baltimore/Washington International Airport using a .22 caliber handgun and a suitcase filled with gasoline bombs. Byck’s objective: To crash the plane into the White House and assassinate President Richard Nixon. The plane never leaves the gate, though he does shoot and kill a police officer and one of the pilots and wounds the other pilot before being wounded by police and then committing suicide.

1975: First flight of the Sukhoi T-8-1, prototype of the Su-25 attack aircraft.

1987: First flight of the Airbus A320.

1995: The CIA’s Corona reconnaissance satellite program, run in secret with help from the US Air Force from 1959 through 1972, is declassified. Corona satellites were launched aboard rockets, took photos of the Soviet Union and China, then parachuted back into the atmosphere where they would be retrieved in the air by specially equipped US Air Force C-119 Flying Boxcar transport planes.

1996: STS 75 (Columbia 19), launches into orbit.