Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
September 13, 1964 In southeastern Australia, a regional airport in the state of New South Wales (NSW) was opened to the public. This airport is located 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers) northeast of the NSW city of Albury, which is on NSW’s border with the neighboring state of Victoria. Albury Airport serves not only its namesake... Continue Reading →
September 1, 1919 In the southernmost part of Spain located within the Iberian Peninsula, the first scheduled commercial flights began for an airport in the country’s Costa del Sol region. This airport, which is five miles (eight kilometers) southwest of the municipality of Málaga, had been established about six months earlier. The first regular flights... Continue Reading →
August 19, 1929 In skies above the Detroit area, a one-of-a-kind airship manufactured for the U.S. Navy made its first flight. The ZMC-2 was created by the Detroit-based Aircraft Development Corporation and is the only successfully operated all-metal airship ever built. (ZMC stood for “Zeppelin Metal Clad.”) While nicknamed the “Tin Bubble,” the teardrop-shaped ZMC-2 --... Continue Reading →
August 16, 1928 San Diego Municipal Airport-Lindbergh Field was dedicated. The construction of this California-based airport, made possible by a bond issue passed by the city government of San Diego, had been inspired in large part by Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo transatlantic flight the previous year. The site of the new facility was near the airstrip... Continue Reading →
August 10, 1840 American aeronaut Louis Anselm Lauriat traveled in his hydrogen balloon Star of the East in the skies above the present-day Canadian province of New Brunswick. This excursion was the first piloted flight in Canada. At that time, New Brunswick was a British colony; in 1867, it became one of the four original... Continue Reading →
August 5, 1939 In the Canadian province of British Columbia, a regional airport built six miles (nine kilometers) northwest of the city of Kamloops was officially opened. Kamloops Airport was widely seen at the time as a facility that would become a pivotal link in the province’s airways network. “Kamloops Becomes Aerial Crossroads,” stated a... Continue Reading →
July 28, 1979 A major aviation milestone took place with the celebration of an extended runway for a longtime public-use, general aviation airport in northwestern Minnesota’s community of Pinecreek. This 1,150-foot (350.5-foot) extension, by stretching the runway across the United States’ border with Canada and into the community of Piney in the Canadian province of... Continue Reading →
July 13, 1919 The first two-way air crossing of the Atlantic Ocean was completed by Major George Herbert Scott of the British Royal Air Force. The aircraft used for this crossing was the military airship R34, which had been built by the British engineering conglomerate William Beardmore and Company. On July 2, Scott -- along... Continue Reading →
July 6, 1946 An airport of the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was formally handed over free of charge to the government of Iceland. This military airport, located on the outskirts of Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík, was transferred to that Nordic island country about 14 months after World War II in the European... Continue Reading →
June 22, 1909 Talk about being multimodal! The firm of Wyckoff, Church & Partridge (WCP), automobile dealers based in New York City, formally became the first corporate entity in the United States to sell planes. As far as automobiles were concerned, WCP had already established itself by that time as an early pioneer in showrooms... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 