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On This Day in Aviation History February 7 th
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1876 - Birth of Antonio Fernández Santillana, Spanish early aviator and aircraft designer

1886 - Birth of George Howard Brett, Early USAAF pilot and WWII high ranking officer

1889 - Birth of Otto Hartmann, German WWI flying ace

1894 - Birth of Arthur Marie Marcel Coadou, French WWI flying ace, who also served in WWII

1897 - Birth of James Hubert Ronald Green, British WWI flying ace.

1903 - Death of James Glaisher English meteorologist and aeronaut.

1906 - Birth of Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov, Soviet aircraft designer, founder of Antonov ASTC, world-famous aircraft company.

1917 - Zeppelin LZ82 (L36) is wrecked after a forced landing in fog at Rehben-an-der-Aller.

1918 - During U.S. Navy tests of a converted Curtiss N-9 biplane as an unpiloted flying bomb, equipped with a Sperry automatic control, Lawrence Sperry takes it up to prove airworthiness of the design, crashes, but pilot unhurt.

1920 - French aviator Sadi Lacointe, piloting a Nieuport-Delage NID.29V, becomes the 1st pilot to set a new Federation Aeronautique Internationale world speed record after WWI. He reaches a measured speed of 275.862 km/h (171.141 mph) along 1 km (3,280 ft.) course.

1926 - Birth of Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov, Soviet cosmonaut and eminent space engineer.

1927 - Georgetown University medical school in Washington, D.C., offers the 1st aviation medicine course in the United States.

1928 - Australian Bert Hinkler takes off with his Avro Avian, registration G-EBOV, for a 11,000-mile solo flight from Croydon England to Darwin Australia. He is the 1st to make such a trip, setting four other new records: longest solo flight, longest light plane flight, 1st nonstop flight from London to Rome and fastest journey from Britain to India.

1931 - The Boeing XP-15 prototype, American monoplane fighter, is destroyed when a propeller blade failed and the engine tore loose from its mounts.

1932 - Birth of Alfred Merrill Worden, American test pilot and astronaut who was the command module pilot for the Apollo 15 Moon Mission, one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon.

1942 - Death of Kisaji Beppu, Japanese WWII flying ace, Killed in action near Rangoon.

1956 - Death of Hugh Montague Trenchard, British officer who was instrumental in establishing the RAF, described as the Father of the Royal Air Force.

1963 - Birth of Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper, American Naval officer and a former NASA astronaut.

1964 - Canadian Golden Hawks aerobatic team is disbanded for financial reasons having flown a total of 317 shows across North America..

1965 - Beginning of Operation Flaming Dart, U.S. and (South) Vietnam Air Force military operation, reprisal air strikes after several attacks on U.S. bases by Vietcong units, particularly in reply to a mortar attack at Pleiku.

1971 - Death of Alfred Clayburn Atkey, Canadian WWI fighter ace

1972 - Death of Charles Howard Pixton, early British aviator and air racer, 1st test pilot for Avro.

1974 - Death of John Randall Daniel 'Bob' Braham, British WWII fighter pilot and one of the most highly decorated airman of the RAF in WWII, top scoring RAF ace flying twin-engined fighters and was fifth among RAF fighter pilots in all theatres of war. He resigned postwar in the RCAF.
1977 - Launch of Soyuz 24, Soviet mission to the Salyut 5 space station, 3rd and final mission to the station, last purely military crew for the Soviets and the final mission to a military Salyut.

1978 - Death of Johannes Jensen, German WWI flying ace

1980 - Death of Secondo Campini, Italian engineer and one of the pioneers of the jet engine.

1980 - Death of Richard Williams, Australian WWI Pilot, WWII high ranking officer, Australian director of Civil aviation postwar, 1st military pilot trained in Australia, widely regarded as the "father" of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

1981 - A USSR Tupolev Tu-104A belonging to the Soviet Pacific Fleet and carrying its top brass on the return from a staff maneuvers in Leningrad crashes on take-off at a military airfield in Pushkin, Leningrad oblast, killing all 52. The reason was later determined to be the improper loading of the plane, with a part of the cargo, two huge rolls of book paper, unsecured and shifting during the take-off, causing a wingstrike.

1982 - Death of Roy Williamson Chappell, British WWI flying ace, intelligence specialist on Japan and the Japanese military who served through the end of WWII.

1984 – STS-41-B Mission – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the 1st untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).

1991 - Salyut 7, Russian space station, is deorbited and makes an uncontrolled reentry over Argentina, scattering much of its debris over the town of Capitan Bermudez.

1994 - 1st launch of a Milstar Satellite (Military Strategic and Tactical Relay) operated by the USAF

1994 - Death of Richard Mervin Bissell, Jr.,American CIA officer responsible for major projects such as the U-2 spy plane.

1999 - Launch of Stardust, NASA robotic space probe to study the asteroid 5535 Annefrank and collect samples from the coma of comet Wild 2.It is the 1st sample return mission to collect cosmic dust and return the sample to Earth and the 1st to acquire images of a previously visited comet.

2001 - Launch of Sicral, Italian mititary communications satellite, along with british military communications satellite Skynet 4f.

2001 - Death of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow, pioneering American aviator, author, and spouse of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh.

2001 - Launch of STS-98, Atlantis Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

2008 - Launch of STS-122, NASA Space Shuttle Atlatis mission to the International Space Station .

2009 - Manaus Aerotáxi Embraer EMB-110P1 Bandeirante crashed into the Manacapuru River about 80 kilometers (50 mi) southwest of Manaus, killing 24 over 28. Overweighted, its left engine failed while en route. Unable to maintain level flight on a single engine in its overweight condition, the aircraft crashed while attempting to execute an emergency landing.