OCT19
1783 - Pilâtre de Rozier takes a passenger, André Giroud de Villette, for a 9 minutes tethered flight in a Montgolfière.
http://adelaitre.pagesperso-orange.fr/Villette.htm - http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Giroud_de_Villette
1893 - Birth of Henri Mignet, French radio engineer who became well known as an aircraft designer and builder of the Flying Flea family of aircraft.
1895 - Birth of August Delling, German WWI flying ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Delling - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/delling.php
1897 - Birth of Kenneth Arthur Seth-Smith, British WWI flying ace.
1901 - Alberto Santos-Dumont flies his dirigible Number 6 around the Eiffel Tower to collect a FF100,000 prize.
1911 - French Ludovic Georges Louis Verdier flies his Guyot-Verdier N° 3 at a height of 500 m on a 35km course during 35 min.
1911 - Death of Eugene Burton Ely, American aviation pioneer, credited with the 1st shipboard aircraft take off and landing. While flying at an exhibition in Macon, Georgia, his plane was late pulling out of a dive and crashed.
1917 - Zeppelin LZ 50 (L16) is dismantled after being wrecked in an accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Zeppelins#Zeppelins_constructed_during_World_War_I
1918 - Birth of John Fraser Drummond , British WWII fighter ace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fraser_Drummond - http://cieldegloire.com/002_raf_drummond_j_f.php
1930 - A flight of Fairey IIIDs on No.47 Squadron takes off from Khartoum to West Africa
1931 - 1st flight of the Farman 211, french high wing 4 engine monoplane bomber prototype.
1931 - The sole Lockheed-Detroit YP-24, American 2 seat fighter prototype, crashed when the landing gear lever had broken off.
1932 - 1st flight of The Mitsubishi 3MT5, Japanese twin-engined biplane bomber intended to operate from Japanese aircraft carriers. Proved to be unsuitable for carrier use, the 11 aircraft built were instead used as land-based trainers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_3MT5
1937 - 1st flight of The Airspeed AS.30 Queen Wasp (Floatplane version), British pilotless target aircraft prototype.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspeed_Queen_Wasp
1944 – In a meeting at Mabalacat on Luzon, the newly arrived commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Air Fleet, Vice Admiral Takijiro Ohnishi, commanding Japanese naval air forces in the Philippine Islands, observes that ordinary air tactics have become ineffective against the U. S. Navy and suggests the formation of a special attack unit to crash Zero fighters carrying 250-kg (551-lb) bombs bodily onto American warships. It is the beginning of the formation of kamikaze suicide units.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takijir%C5%8D_%C5%8Cnishi#World_War_II
1945 - 1st flight of the Dewoitine D-520DC, Twin seat trainer version of the french fighter.
http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=4118
1946 - 1st flight of Lockheed L-649 Constellation, American 4 engine airliner, 1st real civilian version of the Lockheed Constellation line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-649_Constellation
1964 - 1st flight of The Agusta A.101 (originally designated AZ.101), Italian large prototype transport helicopter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agusta_A.101
1965 - Death of Colin Peter Brown, Scottish WWI fighter ace and RAF high ranking officer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Brown_(RAF_officer) - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/scotland/brown4.php
1967 - Mariner 5, NASA spaceprobe conducted a flyby at a distance of less than 4000 km above the cloud tops of Venus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
1970 - Hindustan Aeronautics completes its 1st licence-built MiG-21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Aviation/Historical_anniversaries/October_in_aviation/October_19
1986 – Samora Machel, President of Mozambique and a prominent leader of FRELIMO, and 33 others die when their Tupolev Tu-134A-3 plane crashes into the Lebombo Mountains.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Mozambican_Tupolev_Tu-134_crash
1988 - Indian Airlines Flight 113 Boeing 737-2A8 crashed on its final approach to Ahmedabad airport killing all 130. Navigational aids at Ahmedabad airport were not functioning accurately and the ATC failed to ensure that the latest weather information was communicated to the aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_113
2002 - Death of Nikolai Nikolayevich Rukavishnikov, russian Physicist and cosmonaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Rukavishnikov
2004 - Corporate Airlines Flight 5966 British Aerospace Jetstream 32 crashed on the approach to Kirksville Airport, killing 13 over 15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Airlines_Flight_5966
2006 - Launch of Metop-A, 1st of a serie of 3 polar orbiting meteorological satellites operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetOp
2008 - Launch of Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), NASA satellite that is making a map of the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_Boundary_Explorer
2011 - Launch of ViaSat-1, communications satellite, world's highest capacity communications satellite with a total capacity in excess of 140 Gbit/s, more than all the satellites covering North America combined, at the time of its launch.