Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
June 12, 1994 The Boeing 777, the world’s largest twinjet, made its first flight. The two-engine, wide-body jetliner, popularly known as the “Triple Seven,” was manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airlines. The aircraft was flown by chief test pilot John E. Cashman, taking off at 11:45 on that Sunday morning for a three-hour excursion from a... Continue Reading →
May 25, 2015 Time magazine published an interview with U.S. Navy Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., just a couple of days before he began officially serving as head of the U.S. Pacific Command (the oldest and largest of the unified combatant commands of the U.S. Armed Forces). Harris is the first Asian-American to achieve the... Continue Reading →
May 21, 1979 The U.S Air Force (USAF), in a key victory for a group of American women who had flown planes in support of their country during World War II, officially recognized the active military status of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during that global conflict and issued honorable discharges to those aviators.... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Ben Kuroki was born in Gothenburg, Nebraska. His parents were Japanese immigrants. Kuroki grew up in the Cornhusker State, graduating from high school in 1936. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kuroki’s father encouraged both him and his brother Fred to join the U.S. military. The brothers were turned down... Continue Reading →
The Los Angeles Times highlighted an important but increasingly overlooked aviation pioneer from the World War II era. Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese-American woman to fly in support of U.S. military efforts, and the article in the Los Angeles Times focused on a 1944 letter from her to one of her still-surviving relatives.... Continue Reading →
Not long after Najeeb Elias Halaby, Jr., stepped down as administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency (the present-day Federal Aviation Administration), various newspapers carried an Associated Press story about his just-released congressional testimony earlier in the year on a major aviation challenge. “Drunk Flying Among Private Pilots is Serious Problem,” proclaimed the headline in one... Continue Reading →
Eastern Airlines began its Eastern Airlines Shuttle service between LaGuardia Airport in New York and Washington, DC, and Boston. Initially, the service provided flights on Lockheed 1049 Super Constellation aircraft every two hours from 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. However, this soon proved to be inadequate to passenger demand, so the hours were extended to... Continue Reading →
Talk about an unexpected detour . . . Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, a scientist and inventor who also possessed a strong passion for travel via air balloons, found himself inadvertently flying smack into potential wartime intrigue and danger. Lowe, who was born in New Hampshire, in 1832, possessed a tremendous curiosity about the world around him... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. The Michigan-born pilot departed Dover, England, for Calais, France, in a monoplane that she had never flown before and with a compass she had just recently learned to use. Quimby, despite those challenges as well as thick fog that limited visibility... Continue Reading →
Varney Air Lines officially began service with a history-making U.S. airmail flight that originated in the city of Pasco, Washington. “America’s most modern and rapid transportation of mail was brought to the northwest today,” reported that day’s edition of the Salt Lake Tribune. Walter T. Varney, a pilot in the aviation section of the U.S.... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 