Originally published in 2002
Famous Firsts in Aviation 1904-10
1904
- First airplane maneuvers. Orville Wright made the first tum with an airplane (Sept. 15); five days later his brother Wilbur made the first complete circle.
1905
- First airplane flight over half an hour. Orville Wright kept his craft up 33 minutes, 17 seconds (Oct. 4).
1906
- First European airplane flight. Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian, flew a heavier-than-air machine at Bagatelle Field, Paris (Sept. 13).
1908
- First airplane fatality. Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, U.S. Army Signal Corps, was in a group evaluating the Wright plane at Fort Myer, Virginia. He was up 75 feet with Orville Wright when the propeller hit a bracing wire and was broken, throwing the plane out of control, killing Selfridge and seriously injuring Wright (Sept. 17).
1909
- First Cross-Channel flight. Louis Bleriot flew in a 25-hp Bleriot VI monoplane from Les Baraques near Calais, France, and landed near Dover Castle, England, in a 26.61 mile (38-km) 37-minute flight across the English Channel (July 25).
1910
- First licensed woman pilot. Baroness Raymonde de la Roche of France, who learned to fly in 1909, received ticket No. 36 on March 8.
- First flight from shipboard. Lt. Eugene Ely, USN, flew a Curtiss plane from the deck of the cruiser Birmingham at Hampton Roads, Virginia and flew to Norfolk (Nov. 14). The following January he reversed the process, flying from Camp Selfridge to the deck of the armored cruiser Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay (Jan. 18).
- First aircraft to take off from water. Henri Fabrer in a Gnome-powered floatplane, at Martigues, France (March 28).