1907: At Issy-les-Moulineaux, Blériot flies 492 feet in his monoplane No.VI, the Libellule [dragonfly]. Built by Louis Peyret, the foreman at his works, it has two sets of wings in tandem. To control vertical movement, the pilot slides to end fro on a wheeled seat.

1909: Louis Blériot of France, who flies his Blériot No.XI monoplane from Les Baraques to Dover, England in 37 minutes, makes the first airplane crossing of the English Channel. The event increases public and government awareness of the possible military aspects of the airplane.

1909: Van den Schkrouff makes the first flight in Russia in a Voisin biplane at Odessa.

1964: President Johnson publicly revealed the existence of a new Air Force reconnaissance aircraft which he called the SR-71 instead of RS-71. The Air Force decided that it was easier to re-number the aircraft SR-71 than to correct the President. Thus we all know the aircraft as the SR-71 to this day.

2000: Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde (registration F-BTSC) charter departing from De Gaulle airport in Paris bound for New York's JFK Airport crashed just after takeoff into a hotel in Gonesse, France. All 109 people on board died, along with four people on the ground. According to the accident investigation report, the probable cause was the destruction of one of the aircraft's main wheel tires, as a result of passing at high speed over a part lost by a pre-departing Continental Airlines DC-10 during the takeoff run. The piercing of one of the fuel tanks by a piece of the exploding tire ignited the leaking jet fuel and caused a loss of thrust in engine number one and two in quick succession.