On July 26, 2016, a strange, slow, silent aircraft landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport, completing a journey that had begun 16 months earlier at the same airfield. Solar Impulse 2 had just circumnavigated the Earth — crossing Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North...
On October 4, 2004 — the 47th anniversary of Sputnik — a small, white aircraft climbed to 112 kilometres above the Mojave Desert, briefly reached space, and returned safely to Earth. It was the third such flight in five days. The pilot was different each time but the...
On December 14, 1986, a strange-looking aircraft — long, thin, with two fuselages, a pusher engine, a puller engine, and wings so flexible they bent visibly under their own weight — rolled down a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California and lifted off. It was...
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories12 (highest female ace of all time)Aircraft FlownYak-1, Yak-1BWarsWorld War IIBorn / Died18 Aug 1921 – 1 Aug 1943 (age 21)Unit586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment Order of the Red Banner...
At 10:56 PM Eastern time on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong placed his left boot on the surface of the Moon and said words that 600 million people — one in five people alive on Earth — were listening to live. The signal took 1.26 seconds to travel from the lunar surface...
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories59 (officially credited)Aircraft FlownMiG-3, Yak-1, P-39 AiracobraWarsWorld War II (Eastern Front)Born / Died6 Mar 1913 – 13 Nov 1985 (age 72)Unit16th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment Stamp of Russia 2013 No 1675...
In 1965, Pan American World Airways president Juan Trippe phoned Boeing president Bill Allen and asked whether Boeing could build an aircraft twice the size of anything currently flying. Allen said he would look into it. The two men then did something remarkable for...
In the summer of 1940, roughly 3,000 RAF fighter pilots stood between Nazi Germany and the conquest of Britain. Against them, the Luftwaffe fielded over 2,600 aircraft and some of the most experienced combat aviators in the world. For four months — from July to...
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