On July 25, 1909, Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel. Born in Cambrai, France, on July 1, 1872, Blériot was the first of five children. At the age of 10, he attended the Institute of Notre Dame in Cambrai, where he often won prizes for his engineering drawings.
Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss died on July 23, 1930, in Buffalo, New York. Glenn Hammond Curtiss was born on May 21, 1878, in Hammondsport, New York. He became interested in bicycles as a young man and was a champion racer, riding bikes he had designed and built.
Neil Alden Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, was born on August 5, 1930, near Wapakoneta, Ohio.
On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic by a female, five years to day after Charles Lindbergh first made the same trip.
On March 19, 1941, the War Department ordered the creation of the the 99th Pursuit Squadron, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen.