Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Raja Chari, whose considerable flight experience so far has included a journey into space, was born in Milwaukee in 1977 to Sreenivas V. “Shari” Chari and Peggy Egbert. “Shari” Chari, an engineer, had been born in the city of Hyderabad in India in 1942. He and Peggy Egbert met in Milwaukee while he was a... Continue Reading →
May 27, 1931 Auguste Piccard, a world-renowned physicist and inventor, and his fellow physicist Paul Kipfer achieved a record-setting balloon flight in which they became the first human beings to enter into the stratosphere. (The stratosphere is the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere; it is located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere.) Auguste Piccard... Continue Reading →
April 27, 2005 In the skies over southeastern France, the largest-ever passenger plane made its first flight. The 308-ton (279.4-metric ton), double-decked Airbus A380 -- with a length of 238 feet and seven inches (72.7 meters) and a wingspan of 261 feet and eight inches (79.8 meters) -- made it back to Toulouse Blagnac International Airport three hours... Continue Reading →
March 25, 1992 A new airport in the Republic of Malta, a country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, first became fully operational. This airport is in the town of Luqa, which is only 3.1 miles (five kilometers) southwest of Malta’s capital of Valletta. The specific island on which the airport is located... Continue Reading →
February 17, 2005 In Japan’s Chubu (Central) region, an international airport was officially opened on an artificial island in Ise Bay within the city of Tokoname. Chubu Centrair International Airport – widely called Centrair -- was built to replace Nagoya Airport (now a domestic secondary airport known as Nagoya Airfield) as that area’s primary access... Continue Reading →
February 9, 1933 Scottish aviator James A. Mollison, flying a de Havilland Puss Moth high-wing monoplane that he named “The Heart’s Content,” completed the first solo east-west airborne crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean. This unprecedented flight ended with Mollison landing at the city of Natal in northeastern Brazil at 1:20 p.m. He arrived there... Continue Reading →
February 4, 1883 Stephen Latchford, a U.S. diplomat who became one of his country’s foremost authorities on aviation law and a key influence when it came to that mode of transportation, was born in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. Perhaps Latchford’s birth in a community that owed its name to being a rail junction presaged a transportation-themed career... Continue Reading →
Bobby Charles Wilks, who was born in St. Louis in 1931, achieved several key “firsts” as an African American aviator. In 1956, he graduated with a commission of ensign from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Reserve Officers’ Candidate School in New London, Connecticut. Not long after receiving this commission, Wilks was assigned as a flight student... Continue Reading →
January 20, 1959 The first flight of the British short-to-medium-range turborprop airliner Vickers Vanguard took place in the skies above southeastern England. This plane was designed and built by the British aircraft manufacturer Vickers-Armstrongs. The chief test pilot for the Vanguard’s maiden flight was E.R. “Jock” Bryce. A 1955 article in the Melbourne-based Age newspaper characterized... Continue Reading →
January 18, 1857 Henry Wigram, who became a transportation pioneer in New Zealand, was born in London, England. Wigram immigrated to what was then the British colony of New Zealand in 1883. He settled in the city of Christchurch, located in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island. Wigram eventually became involved in Christchurch’s... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 