FEB17

1864 - Birth of Hilda Beatrice Hewlett, 1st British aviatrix to earn a pilot's licence, successful early aviation entrepreneur. She created and ran the 1st flying school in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Hewlett

1869 - Birth of Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, generally known simply as Gago Coutinho, Portuguese aviation pioneer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gago_Coutinho

1893 - Birth of Dieter Collin, German WWI flying ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Collin - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/collin.php

1893 - Birth of Thomas Cecil Silwood Tuffield, Bristish WWI flying ace

http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/tuffield.php

1896 - Birth of Forde Leathley, Irish WWI flying ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forde_Leathley - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/ireland/leathley.php

1897 - Birth of Augustus Henry Orlebar, British WWI pilot, test pilot and air Racer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Orlebar - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/orlebar.php

1898 - Birth of John Towlson Morgan, British WWI flying ace.

http://theaerodrome.com/aces/england/morgan1.php - http://www.geni.com/people/John-Towlson-Morgan/6000000012131936257

1898 - Birth of Maxwell Hutcheon Findlay, Scottish WWI fighter ace and air racer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_Findlay - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/scotland/findlay3.php

1898 - Birth of Hugh Fitzgerald Moore, Scottish WWI flying ace

http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/scotland/moore3.php

1899 - Birth of Harry George Armstrong, American Aviatior, pioneer in the field of aviation medicine, known as "the father of space medicine". The "Armstrong Limit", the altitude above which water boils at the temperature of the human body, is named after him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_George_Armstrong

1909 - Birth of Gerald W. A. 'Gerry' Bell, pioneering afro-canadian aviator and instructor who served in WWII.

http://pw20c.mcmaster.ca/periodical-november-1944-0

1911 - Fred Wiseman departed in Wiseman-Cooke #2 Biplane on the 1st airmail flight sanctioned by the U.S. post office. He flew from Petaluma to Santa Rose, CA carrying a sack of coffee, fifty copies of the local newspaper, the Press Democrat, and three letters.

http://earlyaviators.com/ewisema1.htm

1912 - Death of Douglas Graham Gilmour, British early aviator, While testing a new monoplane in a flight from Brooklands to Richmond

http://earlyaviators.com/egilmou1.htm

1915 - Zeppelin LZ24 (L3) is stranded and destroyed in a gale at Jutland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zeppelins#Zeppelins_finished_before_World_War_I

1916 - Birth of Prince Alexander Sergeevich Obolensky, Russian Rurikid prince and an international rugby union footballer who played for England and RAF WWII pilot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Obolensky

1918 - Birth of Yasuhiko Kuroe, Japanese Second Sino-Japanese War and WWII fighter ace, high ranking officer postwar.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BB%92%E6%B1%9F%E4%BF%9D%E5%BD%A6 - http://www.cieldegloire.com/010_kuroe_y.php

1919 - Death of Henry "Hank" Robinson Clay, Jr., American WWI flying ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Clay_(aviator) - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/usa/clay.php

1926 - Alan Cobham with a De Havilland D.H.50J complete a 25,749km flight from Croydon to Cape Town.

http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/havilland_dh-50.php

1930 - 1st flight of the Farman F-301, French tri-engine High wing monoplane airliner , evolution of the F-300.

http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=4549

1934 - 1st airmail flight between Australia and New Zealand is made by Charles Ulm in the Avro Ten 'Faith in Australia' from Muriwai Beach, Auckland to Sydney, taking 14 hours 10 minutes.

http://www.nzstamps.org.uk/air/air34/index.html

1939 - Death of Kurt Adolf Monnington, German WWI flying ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Adolf_Monnington - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/monnington.php

1944 - 1st night bombing attack launched by an American aircraft carrier. 12 radar equipped US Navy Grumman TBF1C Avengers, from the USS Enterprise, attack Truk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CV-6)#Return_to_duty

1944 - Death of Hideo Maeda, Japanese WWII flying ace, killed in action.

http://acesofww2.com/japan/

1945 - Death of Jürgen Harder, German WWII fighter ace, killed in the crash of his Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-14 following an engine failure. Escaping toxic fumes thus intoxicated Harder who then lost control of the aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Harder

1946 - 1st flight of the Morane-Saulnier MS-660, French single seat high wing light touring aircraft prototype designed for homebuilding.

http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=10198

1951 - Birth of Rashid Minhas or Rashid Minhas Shaheed, Pilot Officer in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) during the 1971 Pakistan-Bangladesh War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Minhas

1959 - Turkish Airlines Vickers Viscount 793 on an international charter flight from Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, Turkey, to London Heathrow Airport United Kingdom, carrying the Turkish prime minister and a party of government officials crashed in a wood 3 miles (4.8 km) from the threshold of Gatwick runway during its final approach to land in extensive fog killing 14 over 24.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1959_Turkish_Airlines_Gatwick_crash

1959 - Launch of Vanguard II, US earth-orbiting satellite designed to measure cloud-cover distribution over the daylight portion of its orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_2

1965 - Launch of Ranger 8, US spacecraft designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_8

1966 - Launch of Diapason, 2nd french artificial satellite.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapason_(satellite)

1968 - A Sykorski CH-53A Sea Stallion with modified T64 engines took off with a gross weight of 23540kg and a 9925kg payload, establishing an unofficial record.

http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/sik_s-65.php

1969 - Death of Albert Victor Tonkin, Australian WWI flying ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Tonkin - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/australi/tonkin.php

1972 - Death of Gilbert Stuart Martin Insall, British WWI pilot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Stuart_Martin_Insall

1974 - Robert K. Preston, a US Army private 1st class, stole a US Army UH-1 Iroquois helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, flew it to Washington, D.C., and hovered for six minutes over the White House before descending on the south lawn, about 100 yards from the West Wing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Preston

1986 - Robert Harris flew a Grob 102 Standard Astir III glider to a world record altitude of nearly 15,000m (49,000ft).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record#Gliders

1993 - Death of Johann "Hans" Baur, German WWI flying ace, Airliner pilot and Adolf Hitler's personal pilot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Baur - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/baur.php

1996 - Launch of The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), NASA robotic space probe to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAR_Shoemaker

2005 - Chubu Centrair International Airport (artificial island in Ise Bay) opens, taking over Nagoya airfield (Komaki Airport) as Main airport of Nagoya.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABbu_Centrair_International_Airport - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagoya_Airfield

2006 - Aloha Airline, American airline, emerged from bankruptcy protection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines#Economic_challenges

2007 - Launch of Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS), constellation of 5 NASA satellites (THEMIS A through THEMIS E) to study energy releases from Earth's magnetosphere known as substorms, magnetic phenomena that intensify auroras near Earth's poles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THEMIS