Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In 1991, Lieutenant Commander Marilyn Melendez Dykman became the first Hispanic-American female aviator in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). Her achievement helped pave the way for similar opportunities for female cadets of all races and ethnicities at the USCG. For information about Marilyn Melendez Dykman and other Hispanic-American pioneers in the USCG, please check out... Continue Reading →
Aviation trailblazer Aida de Acosta (1881-1962) was born in Long Beach, New Jersey. She was the daughter of Ricardo de Acosta, a steamship company executive of Cuban descent. In June 1903 Acosta became the first woman to fly a motorized aircraft on her own. While she was visiting Paris, renowned Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont taught... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Olga E. Custodio was born in San Juan in 1953. She was admitted into the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Officer Candidate School and then accepted as a candidate for training as a USAF pilot. Custodio subsequently entered the Flight Screening Pilot Officer Training School in 1980. After completion of this flight screening, Custodio... Continue Reading →
Airline transport pilot and certified flight instructor Wang Zheng (also known as Julie Wang) became the first Asian woman to circumnavigate the Earth in an airplane, and the first Chinese person to fly solo around the world, when she returned to the Texas town of Addison in the Dallas area 33 days after starting her... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer, Gustave Whitehead, may or may not have flown a powered aircraft two years before the Wright Brothers. Whitehead (or Weisskopf in his native German) emigrated to the US in the late 1800s, after a troubled childhood in Bavaria. He was trained as a mechanic and then forcibly ganged onto a ship in Hamburg... Continue Reading →
Patent No. 1,000,000 was issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office to Francis H. Holton for the invention of a tubeless vehicle tire. Beyond the celebration of the milestone patent number achieved by Holton, the invention was important for other reasons. It represented the incredible advancement of transportation technology since the first... Continue Reading →
More than 16 months after leaving Abu Dhabi, the experimental solar-powered monoplane Solar Impulse 2 completed its first-of-a-kind circumnavigation of Earth by returning to the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The innovative aircraft had been one of two built as part of a privately financed aviation project in Switzerland. The Swiss citizens leading this... Continue Reading →
Hélène Dutrieu, whose skills and accomplishments involved several modes of transportation, was born in the municipality of Tournai in Belgium. By the time she was only 15, she had already established herself as a professional track cyclist. One of Dutrieu’s biggest achievements in this role took place in 1893 when she set a new women’s... Continue Reading →
A new airline, Windward Islands Airway (Winair), began operations in Sint Maarten in the northeast Caribbean. At the time, Sint Maarten – constituting most of the southern portion of the island of Saint Martin – was one of five Dutch island territories in the region that were collectively known as the Netherlands Antilles; Sint Maarten’s... Continue Reading →
In Southeast Asia, the newly established Wearnes Air Services (WAS) began operations. This marked the first regular commercial air service between the island of Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, with a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide biplane known as “Governor Raffles” making the inaugural flight from Singapore (at the time part of the British territories... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 