Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Henry Berliner, a Washington D.C. native, son of an inventor, and a technical genius in his own right demonstrated a prototype helicopter to the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics in College Park, Maryland. Berliner was the sixth son of Emile Berliner, and after a brief stint as an aerial photographer with the Army Air Service,... Continue Reading →
Air Mauritius, the national airline of Mauritius, was officially established. It made its debut just nine months before Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean that is about 1,200 miles (1,900 km) off Africa’s southeast coast, ceased to exist as a British colony and instead became an independent state within the British Commonwealth. Air... Continue Reading →
Air India, which is now India’s national airline, achieved a major milestone with its first international flight. The plane used for this flight was a Lockheed Constellation L-749A aircraft named Malabar Princess. The plane, which was piloted by Captain K.R. Guzdar, flew out of Bombay (now known as Mumbai) for its pioneering 5,000-mile journey to... Continue Reading →
In Brazil, the first flight of a new two-seat trainer aircraft took place. The low-wing monoplane, which became known as the A-122 Uirapuru, could accommodate both the pilot and instructor side-by-side. The A-122 Uirapuru was built by Aerotec, a design and manufacturing company that had been founded in the city of San Jose do Campos... Continue Reading →
Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots Rahul Monga and Anil Kumar began a round-the-world flight in a Flight Design CTSW plane to set a new record for the fastest circumnavigation in a microlight aircraft. (A microlight aircraft is a lightweight, fixed-wing flying machine with seating for no more than two people.) In undertaking their flight, Monga... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer John Robertson Duigan was born in the town of Terang in the colony (now state) of Victoria in southeast Australia. In 1902, he went to England and enrolled in the City and Guilds of London Technical College in Finsbury. Duigan earned a certificate in electrical engineering from the college in 1904, and the... Continue Reading →
Rose Lok achieved nationwide fame as a Chinese-American aviation pioneer during the 1930s. Lok, who was born in China in 1912, immigrated to the United States with her family as a child. They settled in a home on Tyler Street in Boston. By the time she was 20, Lok had developed a strong interest in... Continue Reading →
A hugely successful airborne humanitarian mission in Ethiopia resulted in the establishment of a new and still-intact flight record. Operation Solomon was an Israeli military effort to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel within a tight timeframe. At the time, Ethiopia was in grave danger of political destabilization as the government of Mengistu Aile... Continue Reading →
A fuzzy, many-generations-old photo of Shigeru Serikaku in front of his plane is one of the few images remaining of the adventurous issei from Sashiki, Okinawa. (Courtesy of the Serikaku family, via The Hawaii Herald) As a 13-year-old boy growing up on the Japanese island of Okinawa, Shigeru Serikaku (1890-1971) learned about how the Wright... Continue Reading →
Polish aviation pioneer Tadeusz Góra made a record-setting flight of 359 miles in a PWS-101 glider (an unpowered aircraft dependent on air currents to stay airborne) between the village of Bezmiechowa Górna in southeastern Poland and the city of Šalčininkai in southeastern Lithuania. As a result of this achievement, Góra became the first-ever recipient of... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 