1918: The first regular air mail service begins with regular flights between Washington, D.C. and New York City. It is operated by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

1919: The U.S. Post Office Department begins its first air mail service operations between Chicago and Cleveland, later extended to New York and San Francisco. A de Havilland D.H.4-A is carrying the mail.

1921: Laura Bromwell loops in New York State 199 times in I hour, 20 minutes, setting a new women’s record for consecutive loops.

1930: The first airline stewardess is Ellen Church, a nurse who flies on the Boeing Air Transport flight between San Francisco, California and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

1940: World War II: British bombers make their first runs over Germany.

1948: Tel Aviv is attacked by the Egyptian Air Force. The Israeli Air Force retaliates by striking Arab troops near Samakh.

1957: Over Malden Island in the south Pacific, a British Vickers Valiant piloted by Kenneth Hubbard drops the nation’s first nuclear bomb in a test called Operation Grapple. Designed to yield a one megaton explosion, the bomb fails to detonate properly and only disperses about 300 kilotons.

1958: The USSR launches Sputnik 3 for the second time, following a failed launch about 2 weeks earlier.

1960: The Soviets launch Sputnik 4.

1961: In testimony before House Appropriations Committee, Hugh L. Dryden revealed that simulated free-flight speeds just under 30,000 miles per hour had been achieved at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.

1963: The spacecraft Faith 7 launches on Mercury-Atlas 9, the final mission of the U.S. Mercury program. Pilot Gordon Cooper becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space before splashing down 34 hours later.

1979: First flight of the Dassault Mirage 50.

1987: The USSR launches the Polyus spacecraft, designed to destroy American “Star Wars” satellites with high-powered lasers, but it fails to reach orbit.

2002: Air Astana commences operations.