Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
January 11, 1938 The first aircraft landing at eastern Canada's recently completed Newfoundland Airport (present-day Gander International Airport) took place when pilot Douglas C. Fraser (1903-1990) flew a single-engine Fox Moth VO-ADE biplane owned by Imperial Airways down onto a runway there. “I can remember it quite well,” Fraser later recalled about that clear winter day. He... Continue Reading →
August 14, 1919 The U.S. Post Office Department, pushing the bounds of airmail and its applications further than ever before, conducted its first official delivery of mail via plane to a ship after it had already left port to sail across the ocean. This pioneering experiment took place when pilot Cyrus J. Zimmerman flew a... Continue Reading →
August 2, 1889 Charles Terres Weymann, who earned international fame for his achievements involving two modes of transportation, was born in Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. He was the son of a Haitian mother and American father. Just a few years after the Wright Brothers’ pioneering flight at Kitty Hawk, Weymann learned how to operate... Continue Reading →
July 17, 1962 A new aviation record was set when U.S. Air Force (USAF) Major Robert M. White piloted a rocket-powered North American X-15 aircraft to an altitude of 59.6 miles (95.9 kilometers) above Earth. White’s trek up that far into the sky began with a bomber dropping his aircraft over Nevada. By subsequently zooming as... Continue Reading →
Mara Huling Langevin made history as the first Asian American female -- as well as the first female of any minority -- to become a U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) aviator. “I never thought about being the first of anything,” she said in a 2021 interview with the USCG’s news service MyCG. “All I wanted to... Continue Reading →
May 4, 1964 Geraldine "Jerrie" Mock, less than three weeks after becoming the first woman to fly solo around the world, was awarded the Federal Aviation Agency's Decoration for Exceptional Service by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This presentation took place in the Rose Garden at the White House. The 38-year-old Mock, in circumnavigating the globe... Continue Reading →
Aviation pioneer Helen Hodge was one of the first American women to earn a pilot’s license. She was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1892, and received her secondary school education at Brownell Hall (now Brownell-Talbot School) in that city. By 1909, Hodge and her family had moved to Oakland, California. Over time, both Hodge and... Continue Reading →
On June 6, 1980, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Brenda E. Robinson earned her Wings of Gold at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas. This made her the first black woman to become a U.S. naval aviator. The following year, Robinson made history again when she became the first black woman certified for C-1A carrier... Continue Reading →
February 2, 1954 A major milestone for Japan Air Lines took place with the nighttime departure of its Douglas DC-6B plane known as City of Tokyo from Tokyo International Airport, also known as Haneda Airport, for a pioneering flight to Oakland Airport (renamed Oakland International Airport a few years later) in California. Japan Air Lines... Continue Reading →
January 27, 1989 Aviation pioneer Thomas Sopwith died at his mansion near the city of Winchester in southern England. He was 101. “The Genius of Flight is Dead,” announced a headline in the London-based Evening Standard. Sopwith was born on January 18, 1888, in the Royal Borough of Kensington (now part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) in... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 