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On This Day: July 17

Aviation events for July 17

1908: The USA’s first aviation legislation is passed: a municipal ordinance requiring an annual license and regulating aircraft within the city limits of Kissimmee, Florida.
 
1917: Ground is broken for the first building of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Langley Field laboratory.
 
1933: Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica disappears mysteriously after a successful crossing of the Atlantic.
 
1944: Napalm incendiary bombs are used for the first time in war, dropped by American P-38 fighters on a fuel depot in France.
 
1953: Lieutenant Guy P. Bordelon scores his fifth aerial victory, becoming the United States Navy's only ace of the Korean War. He had scored all five victories since June 29, using an F4U-5N Corsair night fighter to shoot down North Korean light aircraft making night harassment raids.
 
1962: Major Robert M. White (USAF), pilots the North American X-15 to a record altitude of 314,750 feet (59 miles, 96 km).
 
1970: Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport commences passenger screening to help prevent hijackings; the first airport to do so.
 
1975: an American Apollo capsule links up to a Russian Soyuz capsule in orbit, marking the first space collaboration between the two nations. It would also be the last Apollo mission, as well as the last manned mission for six years until the launch of the first Space Shuttle in 1981.
 
1980: Cathay Pacific begins a Hong Kong-London service.
 
1989: the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber makes its maiden flight.
 
1996: TWA flight 800, a Boeing 747-100 (N93119) enroute to Paris, explodes and plummets into the Atlantic off the coast of Long Island shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport. The explosion is blamed on faulty wiring in the center fuel tank.
 
2002: Midway Airlines suspends operations.
 
2007: AeroRepública flight 7330, an Embraer ERJ-190 aircraft, overshot the runway at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Santa Marta, went down an embankment, and ended up with the front end of the aircraft in the ocean. There were no fatalities.
 
2007: TAM flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashes while landing at Sao Paolo, Brazil.
 
 
 

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