Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
April 17, 1962 A dedication ceremony took place for an airport in the vicinity of Bhubaneswar, the capital city of eastern India’s state of Odisha. This airport was specifically dedicated to the people of Odisha, and it had the distinction of being the first commercial airport in the state. The airport is named after Biju... Continue Reading →
April 8, 1956 In the Brazilian state of Paranã, operations began for a newly relocated airport about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the downtown section of the city of Londrina. This milestone took place two decades after Londrina Airport had first gone into service with an unpaved runway in the city’s Vila Isabel neighborhood. The... Continue Reading →
March 20, 1956 Only four days after his 76th birthday, inventor and engineer William Bushnell Stout died of a heart attack at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. Stout, who made significant innovations in the aviation and automotive fields, had been born in 1880 in Quincy, Illinois. After graduating from the Mechanic Arts High School in... Continue Reading →
In 1978, Jill E. Brown made aviation history as the first African American woman to become a pilot for a major U.S. passenger airline. She was born in Baltimore in 1950. Her family owned a farm in West Virginia and, by the time she was nine, Brown had begun operating a tractor there and performing... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Janet Harmon Bragg was born in the city of Griffin, Georgia, on March 24, 2007. She developed a strong interest in flying at a young age. In 1933, Bragg enrolled at Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical University in Chicago. By that time, the university had become an aviation school for blacks that was managed by pilots John C. Robinson (1903-1954)... Continue Reading →
January 15, 1961 Italy’s Leonardo da Vinci Rome Fiumicino Airport, located about 19 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Rome in the town of Fiumicino, was officially opened. This international airport, which replaced Rome Ciampino Airport as the region’s main airport, was named in honor of someone regarded by many as the ultimate Renaissance man. Italian polymath... Continue Reading →
Robbie Hood, a member of the Cherokee Nation, has made notable flight-oriented contributions as an atmospheric scientist. She is a direct descendant of John Ross (1790-1866), whose tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866 was the longest of anyone serving in that role. Ross achieved lasting prominence for his pivotal... Continue Reading →
Richard Francis "Dick" Gordon Jr., who made notable contributions as both a U.S. Navy aviator and NASA astronaut, died at his home in the city of San Marcos, California. He was 88. Gordon had been born in Seattle on October 5, 1929. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1951 with a B.S. in... Continue Reading →
October 29, 1960 In Peru, Lima International Airport in the seaside city and constitutional province of Callao made its public debut. This airport, which is about 6.8 miles (11 kilometers) northwest of the historic district of the country's capital city of Lima, was officially opened a little over four months after its first international flight... Continue Reading →
October 28, 1967 An airport in the town and locality of Chinchilla in the Australian state of Queensland was officially opened. The inaugural duties for the occasion were performed by Reginald Swartz (1911-2006), who was Australia’s minister for civil aviation from 1966 to 1969. This ceremony took place two days after the first aircraft had... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 