1914: French pilot, Maurice Guillaux, makes the first official airmail flight in Australia. His cargo includes 1,785 letters, some Lipton’s Tea and OT Lemon Squash.

1914: The Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps is formed in Washington, D.C., with 60 officers, 260 men, and 6 airplanes.

1915: Katherine Stinson becomes the first woman to loop the loop in an airplane. The stunt pilot performs the full rotation of her airplane over Chicago.

1919: Self-styled Baroness Raymonde de Laroche, the first Frenchwoman to get her flying license, is killed in a flying accident in Northern France.

1921: John H. Glenn, Jr., the first American to orbit the earth, is born in Cambridge, Ohio. After being selected by NASA with the first group of astronauts in 1959, he makes his historic orbital flight on February 20, 1962.

1941: The first RAF aircraft equipped with radar

1942: the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft and first mass-produced jet aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, is flown in Germany for the first time.

1943: US Navy airship K-74 is shot down by a German submarine, the only airship lost to enemy fire during World War II.

1965: the first Russian satellite to complete a lunar flyby, Zond 3, is launched.

1966: Gemini 10, the first mission to complete a double rendezvous with other spacecraft, is launched from Cape Canaveral.

1971: Southwest Airlines (WN) commences flight operations.

1984: Beverly Lynn Burns becomes the first female Boeing 747 airline captain, flying PEOPLExpress flight 604 from Newark to LAX. The achievement earned her extensive media attention, congratulatory honors from several local politicians–and even an invitation to President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. By the time she retired from Continental in 2008, she had captained the 727, 737, 747, 757, 767, 777 and DC-10.

2002: First flight of the Boeing YAL-1A Airborne Laser (ABL).