The Luccheses rob $6 million from JFK Airport in the 1978 Lufthansa Heist. Also, Thai Airways Flight 261 crashes in 1998, as well as Philippine Airlines Flight 434 in 1994. The prototype for the Concorde makes its debut and Katherine Stinson sets an American flight distance record.
Chicago’s Midway Airport suffers crashes of Southwest Flight 1248 in 2005 and United Flight 553 in 1972. In 1987, a Peruvian football club crashes into the Pacific ocean with only the pilot surviving, an Olympic Airways DC-6 crashes into a mountain south of Athens in 1969 and Pan Am Flight 214 goes down in Maryland after being struck by lightning.
On this day in 1985, Space Shuttle Challenger is launched on what would be its final successful mission; in 1976 a Pan Am 747SP sets a speed record for a trans-polar round-the-world flight; in 1908, Henry Farman completes Europe’s first flight between two towns.
The F-86 Sabre sets a world speed record, Wilbur Wright makes the first turn in an airplane, Nikita Khrushchev and a Tu-114 land at Andrews Air Force Base and more…
