1869 – Birth of William Adger Moffett, American pilot and architect of U.S. naval aviation; he was later known as the “Air Admiral.”
1926 – Death of Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz in Budapest, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss), an American stunt performer noted for his sensational escape acts and an early aviator.
1944 – Two dozen de Havilland Mosquitoes of the Royal Air Force, escorted by eight North American P-51 Mustangs, carry out a successful low-level attack on the Gestapo headquarters at Aarhus in Denmark to destroy German records relating to the Danish resistance groups.
1956 – The U.S. Navy R4D-5 Skytrain “Que Sera Sera” (shown above), commanded by Rear Adm. George Dufek, becomes the first airplane to make a landing at the South Pole; it carries the first Americans to set foot at the South Pole and to plant the American flag, as well as the the first men to land on the pole from the air.
1987 – British Airways accepts the airline’s first women pilots.
2012 – First flight of the Shenyang J-31, a Chinese fifth-generation stealth multirole jet fighter.