June 30: At enormous personal risk, Herr Berson and Professor Süring of the Berliner Verein für Luftschiffahrt establish the first ratified altitude record for balloons. Their 8,510-cu. ft. balloon Preussen (Prussia) ascends to 35,435 feet.

July 12: Alberto Santos-Dumont, making an attempt on the Deutsch prize in Paris, lands his dirigible No.5 in the Trocadéro gardens after one of the cords controlling the rudder snaps. He uses a ladder to repair the machine where it lies before taking off again.

July 27: Wilbur and Orville Wright make the first of a series of test glides at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their redesigned biplane glider No. 2 has a larger wing area and wing control worked by a pilot’s hip-cradle device.

August 4: Octave Chanute arrives at the Wright brothers’ camp at Kill Devil Hill and photographs their flight tests with the 1901 glider. Read more...

August 18: At the invitation of Chanute, Wilbur Wright addresses the Western Society of Engineers in Chicago with a 10,000-word paper titled “Some Aeronautical Experiments.”

August 20: The Wright brothers leave Kitty Hawk, N.C., at the end of their second season of testing gliders and return to Dayton, Ohio.