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Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) Wright is born.
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The wright brothers airplane is the first plane to take flight.
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Eugene Ely pilots a Curtiss biplane on the first flight to take off from a ship. In November he departs from the deck of a cruiser anchored in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and lands onshore. In January 1911 he takes off from shore and lands on a ship anchored off the coast of California. Hooks attached to the plane's landing gear, a primitive version of the system of arresting gear and safety barriers used on modern aircraft carriers.
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During World War I, the requirements of higher speed, higher altitude, and greater maneuverability drive dramatic improvements in aerodynamics, structures, and control and propulsion system design.
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U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager becomes the fastest man alive when he pilots the Bell X-1 faster than sound for the first time on October 14 over the town of Victorville, California.
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Boeing makes the B-52 bomber. It has eight turbojet engines, intercontinental range, and a capacity of 500,000 pounds.
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NASA teams with American and Russian aerospace industries in a joint research program to develop a second-generation supersonic airliner for the 21st century. The centerpiece is the Tu-144LL, a first-generation Russian supersonic jetliner modified into a flying laboratory. It conducts supersonic research comparing flight data with results from wind tunnels and computer modeling.
