1910: Capt. G. W. P. Dawes is awarded an aviator’s certificate, becoming first British Army officer to do so.
1944: the first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain. The V-2 would be known as the world’s first ballistic missile, and essentially the forebearer of all modern rockets.
1946: Trans-Pacific Airlines, later known as Aloha Airlines, completes its first flight. First flight: Honolulu-Maui-Hilo using a World War II surplus Douglas C-47.
1955: Capital Airlines takes delivery of the Vickers Viscount, becoming the first US airline to fly a British aircraft.
1958: Explorer 4, a spacecraft tasked with studying the effects of nuclear detonations on earth’s Van Allen Belts, is launched.
1962: the world’s first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom 2, is launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta B rocket.
1963: The world’s first geosynchronous satellite, Syncom 2, is launched from Cape Canaveral.
1971: Apollo 15 is launched on its way to becoming the fourth lunar landing.
1972: Rockwell International is announced as the lead contractor for the NASA Space Shuttle program.
1993: After two missed bad-weather approaches to Mokpo Airport (MPK) in South Korea, Asiana Airlines Flight 733, from Seoul, slams into a ridge of Ungeo Mountain on the third approach, killing 68 of the 116 people on board. It was the first loss of a 737-500 and the worst aviation accident in South Korean history at the time. An investigation subsequently blames the captain, who died in the crash.
2005: Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on mission STS-114, marking the first scheduled flight since the Columbia disaster in 2003.
2010: An Israeli Air Force (IAF) Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter crashes during an exercise in Romania, killing all seven onboard.
2011: A Royal Moroccan Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules crashes near Guelmim, Morocco, killing all 80 people onboard.
