1910 – The world’s youngest flyer, 16-year-old Frenchman Marcel Hanriot, gets his pilot’s brevet.
1929 – Birth of James Alton McDivitt, Korean War fighter pilot; he later became a test pilot and a NASA astronaut.
1967 – First flight of the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-23 (NATO reporting name: “Flogger”), a Soviet variable-geometry fighter aircraft.
1972 – Death of Herbert Joseph “Jimmy” Larkin, Australian World War I flying ace and pioneering Australian aviator; he served also in World War II.
1990 – British Airways Flight 5390, a BAC One-Eleven, suffers explosive decompression over England when one of the front windscreen panes blows out. The captain is partially sucked out of the cockpit, but a flight attendant manages to keep his unconscious body from falling from the aircraft; the first officer lands the aircraft safely at Southampton Airport. All aboard survive.
2012 – A Kenya Police Eurocopter AS350 crashes on a hill outside Nairobi, Kenya, killing all six people aboard. Among the fatalities are Kenya’s Minister of Interior Security and likely presidential candidate George Saitoti and Assistant Minister of Interior Security Joshua Orwa Ojode.