SEP18

1918 - Rudolph W. Schroeder of the U.S. Army Air Service, flew a Bristol airplane to a 28,897ft FAI altitude record at Dayton, Ohio.

http://earlyaviators.com/eschroed.htm

1919 - A Curtiss 18T-2, American two-seat fighter triplane flown by Roland Rohlfs, established a world altitude record of 10640m.(35,000 feet)

http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/curtiss_18t.php

1928 - 1st flight of the Zeppelin LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, German rigid airship, most successful rigid airship ever built, flown commercially on a regular basis from Europe to South America. It flies over a million miles and carries some 13,100 passengers before its demise in 1940.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin

1928 - 1st flight of the Levasseur PL 8-02, French mailplane single engine, 3-seat biplane prototype issued from the original prototype long-distance record-breaking aircraft PL 8-01 'Oiseau Blanc' which disappeared during an atlantic crossing attempt with Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli.

http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=9437

1928 - Juan de la Cierva flew made the 1st rotorcraft crossing of the English Channel with his autogyro Cierva C.8L, from Croydon, England, to Le Bourget, France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro#Early_development

1928 - 1st successful flight of a diesel powered aircraft is made with a Stinson model SM-1DX "Detroiter" Packard radial diesel equiped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_diesel_engine#Early_diesel_aircraft - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinson_Aircraft_Company#Stinson_SM-1_Detroiter

1930 - Death of Ruth Blaney Alexander, American female aviation pioneer and record setter, killed when her NB-3 Barling struck a hillside shortly after takeoff from Lindbergh Field, San Diego on a scheduled cross-country flight to New York City via Wichita, Kansas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Alexander#Death

1932 - Birth of Nikolai Nikolayevich Rukavishnikov, russian Physicist and cosmonaut.

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

1933 - Birth of Valentina Leonidovna Ponomaryova, Soviet Cosmonaut.

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

1935 - 1st flight of the Potez 543, Export version of the 541, French multi-role High wing twin engined reconnaissance bomber aircraft.

http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=1287

1937 - 1st flight of the Amiot 150M, French 5 seat twin engine Bomber flying boat prototype.

http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=9273

1941 - 1st flight of The Curtiss XP-60, US prototype single-engine single-place, low-wing monoplane fighter aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_P-60

1944 - Birth of Charles Lacy Veach, USAF pilot and NASA astronaut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_L._Veach

1947 - Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF is formed as a separate branch.

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

1948 - 1st flight of the Convair XF-92, 1st American delta-wing prototype jet aircraft conceived as a point-defense interceptor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XF-92#Operational_history

1953 - 1st flight of The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 "Farmer", Soviet second-generation, single-seat, twin jet-engined fighter aircraft, 1st Soviet production aircraft capable of supersonic speeds in level flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-19

1954 - Birth of Takao Doi, Japanese engineer and NASA astronaut.

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

1959 - Launch of Vanguard 3, American scientific satellite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_3

1961 - Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations and 15 other passengers and crew died when their DC-6 crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).[citation needed] The exact cause of the crash remains contentious with some eyewitnesses reporting a second aircraft shot down the airliner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskj%C3%B6ld#Death

1968 - Death of Friedrich Altemeier, German WWI fighter ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Altemeier - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/altemeier.php

1968 - 1st flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-20, evolution of the American twin-engine, single-aisle jet airliner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-9-20#Series_20

1973 - Birth of Mark Richard Shuttleworth, South African entrepreneur, 2nd self-funded space tourist and 1st ever African in space.

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

1976 - Death of Albert Boyd, pioneering USAF test pilot who logged more than 23,000 hours of flight time in 723 military aircrafts. He flew every aircraft type operated by the USAF, including attack, cargo, trainer, fighter, experimental, bomber, mission trainer, liaison, observation, and general aviation planes and helicopters.

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

1978 - Death of Rudolf Nebel, German spaceflight advocate active in Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR - "Spaceflight Society") in the 1930s and in rebuilding German rocketry following WWII.

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

1980 - Launch of Soyuz 38, soviet human spaceflight to space station Salyut 6, bringing Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, 1st cuban in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_38

1982 - 1st flight of the Rombac One-Eleven, Romanian production of the British short-range jet airliner British Aircraft Corporation One-Eleven (BAC-111, BAC-1-11 or BAC 1-11).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_One-Eleven#Rombac_production

1982 - Death of Ion Milu, Romanian WWII fighter ace, Instructor, Aerobatic pilot and test pilot, 3rd most succesfull romanian ace.

http://www.aviatori.ro/dict_pers.php?sel=M - http://www.cieldegloire.com/012_milu_i.php

1982 - Death of Maurice Hurel, French engineer and aircraft designer, famous for his studies on lengthened wings.

http://www.aerosteles.net/fiche.php?code=deauville-hurel

1984 - Joe Kittinger lands his 106,000 cubic foot (3,000 m³) Balloon of Peace in Savona, Italy, 1st solo transAtlantic crossing with a balloon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Kittinger#Later_civilian_career

1985 - 1st flight of the PZL-106BT-601 Turbo Kruk, turboprop engined variant of the Polish agricultural aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL-106_Kruk#Variants

1991 - STS-48, space shuttle Discovery mission, is back on earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-48

1995 - 1st flight of the replica Lambach HL II, a rebuilt of a 1930's famous Dutch aerobatics biplane aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSVOBB#Replica

1995 - STS-69, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission, is back on earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-69

1997 - 1st flight of the Zeppelin NT ("Neue Technologie", German for new technology), german semi-rigid airship.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT

2000 - 1st flight of The Boeing X-32, American multi-purpose jet fighter prototype.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-32

2002 - Launch of Hispasat 1D, Spanish telecommunications satellite.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispasat_1D

2006 - Launch of Soyuz TMA-9, Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-9

2007 - Launch of WorldView-1, commercial earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe to meet the growing commercial demand for multi-spectral geospatial imagery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldView-1