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On This Day in Aviation History MARCH 24 th
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1802 - Birth of Jules François Dupuis-Delcourt, Swiss physician, astronom and early aeronaut.

1843 - William S. Henson and John Stringfellow filed articles of incorporation for the world's 1st air transport company, the Aerial Transit Company

1874 - Birth of Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz in Budapest, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss), American stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts, and early aviator.

1875 - Joseph Croce-Spinelli, Théodore Sivel, Claude Jobert, Albert and Gaston Tissandier et Claude Jobert lands the balloon 'Zenith' after a flight of 22h40.

1887 - Birth of Karl Arnstein, one of the most important 20th century airship engineers and designers in Germany and the USA,  chief designer of the U.S. Navy airships, USS Akron and USS Macon.

1891 - Birth of Rudolf Berthold, German WWI flying ace.

1893 - Birth of George Willard Furlow, American WWI flying ace

1896 - Birth of Remington Vernam, American WWI flying ace

1899 - Birth of Arthur Emmons Raymond, American aeronautical engineer at the Douglas Aircraft Company, lead designer of the DC-3.

1907 - Birth of Janet Harmon Waterford Bragg (born Jane Nettie Harmon), American amateur aviator, 1st African-American woman to hold a Commercial Pilot Licence. 

1911 - French aviator and aircraft designer Roger Sommer, takes 12 passenger on the lower wings of his biplane for a 800m flight.

1911 - Gustav Hamel flew from Hendon to Brooklands in a record 58 minutes.

1917 - Birth of Krafft Arnold Ehricke, German rocket-propulsion engineer and advocate for space colonization.

1917 - Death of Renatus Theiller, German WWI flying ace, killed in action when his Albatros D.III was shot down by a Sopwith 1½ Strutter.

1918 - British WWI fighter ace John Lightfoot Trollope of No. 43 Squadron RFC shot down 7 German aircraft in a day with his Sopwith F.1 Camel.

1918 - Death of Maurice Edmund Mealing, British WWI fighter ace, killed in action in his  Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5a

1920 - 1st US Coast Guard Air Station opens at Morehead City, North Carolina.

1924 - 1st production of the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin, British biplane single-seat fighter aircraft, makes its 1st flight.

1924 - A RAF Vickers Vulture amphibious bi-plane takes off from Calshot, UK in an attempt for a round-the-world flight with Archibald Stuart MacLaren, William Noble Plenderleith and W.H. Andrews.

1926 - The Cierva Autogiro Company , British firm to develop the autogyro, is established.

1931 - After being sunk in an accident, Loire 50.01 prototype (single-engined French liaison and training flying boat) was recovered and flew as an amphibian, the two main wheels retracting to a horizontal position clear of the water.

1932 - Birth of Lodewijk van den Berg, Dutch American chemical engineer, specializing in crystal growth, who flew on a 1985 Space Shuttle Challenger mission as a Payload Specialist.

1932 - Jim Mollison leaves Lympne, Kent, England at the start of a record-breaking attempt to fly to South Africa in a D. H. 80A Puss Moth (G-ABKG) specially modified as a long-range single seater. 

1935 - 1st flight of the SFCA Maillet 20, French 3 seat low wing monoplane tourer prototype.

1935 - 1st flight of Avro Anson, British twin-engine, multi-role aircraft

1939 - American woman air record-breaker Jacqueline Cochran achieves a woman's altitude record of 30,052 ft. 5 in. over Palm Spring, California in a Beechcraft Model 17

1943 - Death of Harvey Weir Cook, American WWI flying ace, pioneer in civilian commercial aviation and a leading figure in the development of aviation in the USA, WWII pilot, Killed in the crash of his P-39 Airacobra due to cloudy weather in New Caledonia.

1944 - Major-General Orde Charles Wingate, British Army officer and creator of special military units in Palestine in the 1930s and in WWII is killed in the crash of a USAAF B-25H-1-NA Mitchell bomber in jungle-covered hills in the present-day state of Manipur in northeast India.

1944 – World War II: In an event later dramatized in the movie 'The Great Escape', 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.

1944 - Flight Sergeant Nicholas Stephen Alkemade, rear gunner in Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster heavy bombers during WWII, survived — without a parachute — a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m) when abandoning his out of control and burning aircraft over Germany.

1945 - Operation Varsity: a total of 440 aircraft and gliders (sailplanes) belonging to No.38 and No.46 Groups, RAF Transport Command and 234 aircraft of the US IX Troop Carrier Command drop the British 6th Airborne Division in support of an amphibious attack across the Rhine near Wesel.

1948 - 1st aircraft to fly with a single turboprop engine is the British trainer Boulton Paul P.108 Balliol engined with an Armstrong Siddeley Mamba.

1949 - 1st flight of the Tupolev 82 (also designed TU-22), 1st Soviet jet bomber to feature swept wings.

1951 - Birth of Kenneth Stanley Reightler, Jr., American test pilot & former NASA astronaut.

1956 - Douglas C-54GM / CL-2 North Star 17520 Squadron RCAF 412 over-flew true North geographic pole with Gov. Gen. Vincent Massey on board.

1957 - Birth of Scott Jay "Doc" Horowitz, American astronaut and a veteran of four space shuttle missions.

1962 - Death of Auguste Antoine Piccard, Swiss physicist, Balloonist, inventor and explorer.

1965 - Ranger 9 Spacecraft, designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory, transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact.

1966 - 1st complete flight from vertical take-off transition to horizontal flight deceleration to vertical flight and vertical landing of The Yakovlev Yak-36 'Freehand', Soviet technology demonstrator for a VTOL combat aircraft.

1966 - Following replacement of the 6300kg TF-104 by the TF-106A3 offering 7600kg, The Dassault Mirage IIIV effected its 1st transition to horizontal flight.

1967 - Death of Nikolay Ivanovich Shmelkov, Soviet flying ace of the spanish war who also served in WWII

1968 - Flight 712, operated by Aer Lingus crashed en route from Cork to London, killing 61 passengers and crew. The plane, a Vickers Viscount 803 named "St. Phelim", crashed into the sea off Tuskar Rock, County Wexford. Although the investigation into the crash lasted two years, a cause was never determined.

1976 - A Boeing 747SP lands at Cape Town after setting a world non-stop distance record for a civil aircraft of 10,290 miles.

1977 - 1st production Boeing E-3 Sentry (U.S. military airborne warning and control system AWACS)aircraft based on the Boeing 707) is delivered to the USAF's 552nd Airborne Warning and Control Wing, based at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma.

1992 - Launch of STS-45, NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis scientific mission.

1997 - Death of Martin Caidin, American author and an authority on aeronautics and aviation. Also known for having restored the oldest surviving Junkers Ju 52 aircraft, flown today by Lufthansa

1998 - Launch of SPOT-4 (Système Pour l’Observation de la Terre / "System for Earth Observation"), French high-resolution, optical imaging Earth observation satellite system operating from space.

1999 – Kosovo War: NATO commences air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the 1st time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.

2010 – Scottish airline Highland Airways cease operations.