By Tim Lambert
People have always dreamed of flying. According to Greek mythology, a man named Daedalus made wings for himself and successfully flew. According to old English mythology, an English king called Bladud made wings and tried to fly about 850 BC, but he was killed. About 1005, a monk named Eilmer of Malmesbury made wings and tried to fly by jumping off Malmesbury Abbey. He broke his legs but survived.
About 1250 AD, an English monk named Roger Bacon had an idea for an ornithopter (a vehicle that flaps its wings). However it was balloons that first made human flight possible.
1783
Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier launch the first hot air balloon
Jacques Charles and Nicolas Robert launched the first hydrogen balloon
1784 James Tytler became the first man in Britain to fly in a balloon
1784 Elisabeth Thible became the first woman to fly in an untethered balloon
1785 John Jeffries and Jean-Pierre Blanchard made the first flight across the English Channel in a balloon.
1794 the French used a balloon to spy on the Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus. It was the first use of an aircraft in war.
1852 Henri Giffard made the first powered flight in an airship powered by a 3-horsepower steam engine
1894 Otto Lilienthal experiments with gliders
1903 The Wright brothers fly their plane
1906 a Brazilian named Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first aeroplane flight in Europe
1908 Thomas E Selfridge became the first person to die in a plane crash
1909
Louis Bleriot became the first man to fly across the English Channel
Elise Deroche became the first woman to fly solo
1910
Claude Grahame-White made the first recorded flight at night
Theodore Roosevelt became the first US president to fly in a plane
1911 Calbraith Perry Rodgers became the first man to make a transcontinental flight across North America
1912
Henri Seimet became the first man to fly from Paris to London non-stop
Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel
1913 Pyotr Nesterov became the first man to fly a plane in a loop
1914 Jan Nagórski iflew over the Barents Sea. He was the first man to fly a plane in the Arctic.
1919
The first regular international passenger air service began. The flights were between London and Paris.
Four men, Ross and Keith Smith, Wally Shiers, and James Bennett made the first flight from England to Australia
The first wedding on a plane was held. The plane flew over Texas.
1920 Pierre van Ryneveld and Quintin Brand became the first men to fly from England to South Africa
1922 James Doolittle became the first man to fly across the USA from coast to coast
1923 the first US airship USS Shenandoah made its maiden flight
1927 Charles Lindbergh became the first man to fly across the Atlantic solo
1928
Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm became the first men to fly across the Pacific
Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She was a passenger in a plane piloted by two men.
1929 Richard E Byrd became the first person to fly over the South Pole
1930
Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly from Britain to Australia
Nellie Jay became the first flying cow. She flew in a plane from Bismarck, Missouri to St Louis.
1931 two men, Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer became the first people to enter the stratosphere. In an aluminium capsule attached to a hydrogen balloon, they rose to 51,770 feet (15,781 metres).
1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo
1933
Wiley Post became the first man to fly around the world alone
Douglas Douglas-Hamilton became the first man to fly over Mount Everest
1939
The first commercial flights across the Atlantic began
The first jet aircraft, Heinkel He 178 flys
1947 Chuck Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound
1949 James Gallagher and his crew became the first men to fly around the world nonstop
1952 the first scheduled passenger jet flight across the Atlantic took place
1953 Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to fly faster than sound
1956 Peter Twiss became the first man to fly faster than 1,000 miles an hour
1969 the Boeing 747 ‘jumbo jet’ made its first passenger flight. It flew from Seattle to New York.
1977 The Gossamer Condor, a human-powered plane, was flown by Bryan Allen
1979 Bryan Allen became the first man to fly across the English Channel in a human-powered aircraft called the Gossamer Albatross
1983 Dick Smith became the first man to fly around the world in a helicopter solo
1987 Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand became the first men to cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon
1995 Steve Fossett became the first man to fly across the Pacific single-handed in a balloon
1999 Bertrand Picard and Brian Jones became the first men to circumnavigate the world non-stop by balloon
2002 Steve Fossett became the first man to fly around the world in a balloon alone
