1902: The Wright brothers make the 1st of nearly 1,000 glides on their modified No. 3 glider in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. It is this glider, made of spruce wood and cloth, which incorporates for the 1st time the flight controls of the modern airplane.

1904: Wilbur Wright on the Flyer III in Huffman Prairie, Ohio makes the 1st circular flight.

1904: Wilbur Wright in the airplane Flyer II makes the 1st complete circle in a powered aircraft.

1945: A British Gloster Meteor F.1 makes the 1st flight of an aircraft powered completely by turboprop engines. A turboprop or propjet is an aircraft with a propeller that is driven by a gas turbine engine.

1952: First flight of the Douglas X-3 Stiletto.

1965: A UH-2 Seasprite makes the U.S. Navy's first helicopter rescue of a pilot downed in North Vietnam.

1989: USAir Boeing 737 aborts a takeoff in New York and slides into the East River. Two people are killed.

1993: Erich Hartmann passes away. He was a German World War II fighter pilot and is the highest-scoring fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. He claimed 352 aerial victories (of which 345 were won against the Soviet Air Force, and 260 of which were fighters) in 1,404 combat missions. He insists his greatest achievement was never losing a wingman.