Who was the first person to fly around the world?
Donald Taylor (aviator)
Donald P. Taylor (October 1, 1918 – December 2, 2015) was an American aviator, notable for being in the late summer and early fall of 1976 the first person in history to successfully fly a homebuilt aircraft around the world. From an early age, he'd resolved "I will build an airplane, and I will fly it round-the-world." His plane, "Victoria '76" (named for the only one of Ferdinand Magellan's ships to complete her mission), a Lycoming-powered Thorp T-18 (N455DT) was fitted with improved communications and navigational equipment as well as a new fuel system after his initial 1973 round-the-world attempt had to be aborted due to bad weather between Japan and the Aleutian Islands. Taylor, who lived at the time in California, returned to his starting point of Oshkosh, Wisconsin a hero two months to the day after the 1976-08-01 start of his eastbound journey. The planning of this circumnavigation was especially complicated considering that both the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were closed to U.S. general aviators at the time.
Wang Zheng (pilot)
In September 2016, Wang completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a single piston-engine airplane, becoming the first Chinese person to fly an airplane solo around the world. She departed westbound from Addison, Texas on August 17, 2016, and paused in California to have ferry tanks installed and obtain FAA approvals for the aircraft modifications. She departed from Merced, California on September 2, 2016, and made stops in Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, Guam, the Philippines, China, Thailand, India, the UAE, Greece, Malta, Portugal, the Azores and Newfoundland, before returning to Texas on September 19, thirty-three days later. Wang made the flight in a normally-aspirated Cirrus SR22 modified to hold extra fuel, and covered over 38,500 kilometers (21,000 nautical-miles) in 155 flying hours, over eighteen flight days, flying over or landing in 24 countries. Her longest leg was from Merced, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, covering 2,160 nautical miles in 13.8 hours. Her longest day involved the legs from Lisbon, Portugal to Santa Maria Island in the Azores and then from Santa Maria to St. Johns, Newfoundland, which required her to remain awake for 29 hours.
Paul Cornu
French engineer Paul Cornu was born in Glos la Ferrière, France and was one of thirteen children. At a young age, he helped his father in his transports company. He made history by designing the world's first successful manned rotary wing aircraft.
Waldo Waterman
Waldo Dean Waterman (June 16, 1894 – December 8, 1976) was an inventor and aviation pioneer from San Diego, California. His most notable contributions to aviation were the first tailless monoplane (the precursor to the flying wing), the first aircraft with modern tricycle landing gear and the first successful low cost and simple to fly a flying car which in the 1930s were commonly called Flivver Aircraft.
Wiley Post
After the record-setting flight, Post wanted to open his own aeronautical school, but could not raise enough financial support because of doubts many had about his rural background and limited formal education. Motivated by his detractors, Post decided to attempt a solo flight around the world and to break his previous speed record. Over the next year, Post improved his aircraft by installing an autopilot device and a radio direction finder that were in their final stages of development by the Sperry Gyroscope Company and the United States Army. In 1933, he repeated his flight around the world, this time using the auto-pilot and compass in place of his navigator and becoming the first to accomplish the feat alone. He departed from Floyd Bennett Field and continued on to Berlin where repairs were attempted to his autopilot, stopped at Königsberg to replace some forgotten maps, Moscow for more repairs to his autopilot, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk for final repairs to the autopilot, Rukhlovo, Khabarovsk, Flat where his propeller had to be replaced, Fairbanks, Edmonton, and back to Floyd Bennett Field. Fifty thousand people greeted him on his return on July 22 after 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes.
Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse
Jeanne Labrosse was amongst the crowd watching André-Jacques Garnerin's first hydrogen balloon flight and parachute descent at Parc Monceau, Paris, on 22 October 1797. She made his acquaintance, became his pupil, and flew with him on 10 November 1798, at Parc Monceau. She is sometimes described as the first woman in the world to fly in a balloon although Élisabeth Thible made a free flight in 1784, and Citoyenne Henri flew with Garnerin on 8 July 1798, four months earlier.
Jan Hilgers
Johan Willem Emile Louis Hilgers (19 December 188621 July 1945), more commonly known as Jan Hilgers or John Hilgers, was an Indo (Eurasian) aviator and one of the leading pioneers of Dutch aviation. He was the first Dutch pilot to complete a flight in Dutch airspace 29 July 1910. For the official memorial of this in 1955 a monument was erected in the town of Ede, also a road, the ""Jan Hilgersweg"" was named after him.
History of ballooning
The first untethered, "free" flight with human passengers was on 21 November 1783. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but de Rozier, along with the Marquis François d'Arlandes, successfully petitioned for the honor. For this occasion the diameter of the balloon rose to almost 50 feet with a smoky fire slung under the neck of the balloon placed in an iron basket, it was controllable and replenishable by the balloonists. In 25 minutes the two men traveled just over five miles. Enough fuel remained on board at the end of the flight to have allowed the balloon to fly four to five times as far, but burning embers from the fire threatened to engulf the balloon and the men decided to land as soon as they were over open countryside.
Owen Truelove
Owen James Truelove (24 October 1937 – 14 November 2006) was the first man to fly from the United Kingdom to New Zealand with a motor glider. He died in a gliding accident in New Zealand in November 2006.
Gus McLeod
Gus McLeod (born 1954) is an African American pilot and author whose exploits have been featured in reality television appearances. He was the first person to fly around the North Pole in an open-cockpit biplane.
Donald Hudson (aviator)
Lieutenant Donald Hudson (21 December 1895 – 11 June 1967) was an American World War I flying ace credited with six aerial victories. Postwar, he pioneered aviation in Bolivia, including being the first aviator to fly across the Andes Mountains.
Léopoldine Doualla-Bell Smith
Léopoldine Doualla-Bell Smith is the world's first black flight attendant. She was born in Cameroon, and was a princess of the royal Douala family of Cameroon. She took her first flight as a flight attendant (with Union Aéromaritime de Transport) in 1957. In 1960 she was invited to move to Air Afrique; she was then the only qualified African person in French aviation, and thus became the first employee hired by Air Afrique. She shortly became Air Afrique's first cabin chief. She flew for twelve years. She was honored at the 40th anniversary celebration of the Black Flight Attendants of America at Los Angeles International Airport’s Flight Path Museum.
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He became the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed one orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.
Clara Adams
Clara Adams (born Clara Grabau; 1884 – 1971), known as the "first flighter" and the "maiden of maiden flights," was an aviator who set a variety of flying records. She helped popularize air travel and is known for being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger aboard the Graf Zeppelin.
Wilfred Theodore Blake
It was Blake who led the first attempt to fly round the world in 1922. The pilot for this mission was Norman Macmillan. The aircraft used were to include a de Havilland DH.9 bought from the Royal Air Force for the London to Calcutta stage, a Fairey IIIC floatplane for the Calcutta to Vancouver stage, again the DH.9 for the Vancouver to Montreal stage, and a Felixstowe F.3 flying boat for the trans-Atlantic stage. Blake's ambitious round-the-world trip was cancelled after the second stage of the flight came to grief in the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Macmillan would subsequently write of the attempt in his 1937 book, "Freelance Pilot".
Calbraith Perry Rodgers
Calbraith "Cal" Perry Rodgers (January 12, 1879 – April 3, 1912) was an American aviation pioneer. He made the first transcontinental airplane flight across the U.S. from September 17, 1911, to November 5, 1911, with dozens of stops, both intentional and accidental. The feat made him a national celebrity, but he was killed in a crash a few months later at an exhibition in California.
Joseph A. Walker
Joseph Albert Walker (February 20, 1921 – June 8, 1966) flew the world's first two spaceplane flights in 1963 (according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale's (FAI) definition of the space border), thereby becoming the United States' seventh man in space. Walker was a Captain in the United States Air Force, an American World War II pilot, an experimental physicist, a NASA test pilot, and a member of the U.S. Air Force Man In Space Soonest spaceflight program. His two X-15 experimental rocket aircraft flights in 1963 that exceeded the Kármán line – the altitude of 100 kilometers (62.14 miles), considered by the FAI to mark the threshold of outer space – qualified him as an astronaut under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the FAI.
History by Contract
The agreement ended a bitter feud that existed between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian over credit for developing the first man-carrying airplane to achieve controlled, sustained powered flight. After short test flights of the heavily modified Langley Aerodrome by Glenn Curtiss in 1914, the Smithsonian claimed that the Aerodrome, created by former Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley and unsuccessfully tested shortly before the 1903 Kitty Hawk flights, was "the first man-carrying airplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight," according to the plaque displayed with the Aerodrome. Orville believed that claim "perverted" the history of flying machines and refused to donate the 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer to the Smithsonian, loaning it instead to the Science Museum, London in 1928. When the Smithsonian recanted its claim in 1942, Orville agreed to have the Flyer returned to the United States. The airplane remained in protective storage in Britain during World War II and was not returned to the U.S. until 1948, when the agreement was signed by Orville Wright's executors following his death.
Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay
Grace Marguerite, Lady Hay Drummond-Hay (née Lethbridge, 12 September 1895 – 12 February 1946) was a British journalist, who was the first woman to travel around the world by air (in a zeppelin). Although she was not an aviator herself at first, she contributed to the glamour of aviation and general knowledge of it, by writing articles about her aerial adventures for US newspapers in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Carlos Panini
Carlos Panini was a wealthy Mexican businessman of Italian origin, from Mosio di Acquanegra sul Chiese in the province of Mantova in Lombardia region. He is credited with being the first pilot to fly a light plane around the world. In 1927 he had established Mexico's first scheduled airline, which he had sold shortly prior to the race as he was planning to retire.
Cromwell Dixon
Cromwell Dixon (July 9, 1892 – October 2, 1911) was a teen dirigible pilot and the first person to fly in an airplane across the Continental Divide.
Élisabeth Thible
Élisabeth Thible, or Elizabeth Tible, born in Lyon was the first woman on record to fly in an untethered hot air balloon. On June 4, 1784, eight months after the first manned balloon flight, Thible flew with Mr. Fleurant on board a hot air balloon christened "La Gustave" in honour of King Gustav III of Sweden's visit to Lyon.
Erden Eruç
Erden Eruç ( "Air-den Air-rooch"; born 14 July 1961) is a Turkish-American adventurer who became the first person in history to complete an entirely "solo" and entirely human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth on 21 July 2012 in Bodega Bay, California, United States. The journey had started from Bodega Bay a little more than five years earlier on 10 July 2007. The modes of transport included a rowboat to cross the oceans, a sea kayak for shorelines, a bicycle on the roads and hiking on trails, along with canoes for a few river crossings. The route he followed was long, crossed the equator twice and all lines of longitude, and passed over twelve pairs of antipodal points, meeting all the requirements for a true circumnavigation of the globe. Guinness World Records has officially recognized Eruç for the "First solo circumnavigation of the globe using human power" on a journey that lasted 5 years 11 days 12 hours and 22 minutes, the current world record time for a solo human-powered circumnavigation.
Expedition 360
Expedition 360 is the name of a successful attempt by Briton Jason Lewis to be the first person to circumnavigate the globe using only human power – no motors or sails. It was begun by Lewis and Stevie Smith in 1994 and ended at 12:24 pm on 6 October 2007, when Lewis re-crossed the prime meridian at Greenwich, London, having travelled .
"A true circumnavigation of the world must pass through two points antipodean to each other." Norris McWhirter, founding editor of Guinness, 1971.
Bertrand Piccard
Bertrand Piccard FRSGS (born 1 March 1958) is a Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist. Along with Brian Jones, he was the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe, in a balloon named Breitling Orbiter 3. He was the initiator, chairman, and co-pilot, with André Borschberg, of Solar Impulse, the first successful round-the-world solar powered flight.
Steve Fossett
Steve Fossett was well known for his world records and adventures in balloons, sailboats, gliders, and powered aircraft. He was an aviator of exceptional breadth of experience. He wanted to become the first person to achieve a solo balloon flight around the world (finally succeeding on his sixth attempt, in 2002, becoming the first person to complete an uninterrupted and unrefueled solo circumnavigation of the world in "any" kind of aircraft). He set, with co-pilot Terry Delore, 10 of the 21 Glider Open records, including the first 2,000 km Out-and-Return, the first 1,500 km Triangle and the longest Straight Distance flights. His achievements as a jet pilot in a Cessna Citation X include records for U.S. Transcontinental, Australia Transcontinental, and Round-the-World westbound non-supersonic flights. Prior to Fossett's aviation records, no pilot had held world records in more than one class of aircraft; Fossett held them in four classes.
Gordon Olley
Flying Officer Gordon Percy Olley MM (29 April 1893 – 18 March 1958) was a First World War flying ace who later formed his own airline, Olley Air Services. He was the first pilot to fly a million miles in total.
Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho
Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, GCTE, GCC, generally known simply as Gago Coutinho (; 17 February 1869 – 18 February 1959) was a Portuguese geographer, cartographer, naval officer, historian and aviator. An aviation pioneer, Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral were the first to cross the South Atlantic Ocean by air, from March to June 1922, from Lisbon, Portugal, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Enrique of Malacca
Enrique of Malacca (; ; Malay: Panglima Awang), was a Melaka native who participated in the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan's mission to sail around the world in the 16th century . Italian historian Antonio Pigafetta, who wrote the most comprehensive account of Magellan's voyage, named him "Henrique" (which was Hispanicised as "Enrique" in official Spanish documents). According to biographer-philosopher Stefan Zweig, he is the first person to circumnavigate the world. His name appears as "Henrique", which is Portuguese. His name appears only in Pigafetta's account, in Magellan's Last Will, and in official documents at the "Casa de Contratación de las Indias" of the Magellan expedition to the Philippines.
Robert Garside
Guinness World Records began considering evidence of Garside's record, evaluating the journey that began in New Delhi on 20 October 1997, after his detour to spend time in the UK with his girlfriend, including China, Japan, Australia, South America, North America, Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East. In 2007, Guinness authenticated and recognized Garside's run, formally listing him as the first person to run around the world, declaring they were quite satisfied with the evidence evaluated, and that their conclusion was that:
George William Beatty
George William Beatty (August 28, 1887 – February 20, 1955) was a pioneer aviator who set early altitude and distance records, including one record set on the same day that he flew his first solo flight.
George E. A. Hallett
Colonel George Eustace Amyot Hallett (May 9, 1890 – June 2, 1982) was a pioneer aviator. He and John Cyril Porte planned to make the first transatlantic flight. They were going to use a flying boat commissioned by Rodman Wanamaker, but were prevented by the start of World War I. In 1919 the transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown set the record that they hoped to achieve.
Harry Pidgeon
Harry Clifford Pidgeon (August 31, 1869 – November 4, 1954) was an American sailor, a noted photographer, and was the second person to sail single-handedly around the world (1921-1925), 23 years after Joshua Slocum, a professional sea captain. Pidgeon was the first person to sail a yacht around the world via the Panama Canal and the Cape of Good Hope, the first person to solo-circumnavigate by way of the Panama Canal, and the first person to solo circumnavigate the world twice. On both trips around the world, he sailed a 34-foot yawl named the "Islander", which Pidgeon constructed by himself on a beach in Los Angeles. Prior to his first trip, Pidgeon had no prior experience sailing. He accounts for his adventures in his book, "Around the World Single-Handed: The Cruise of the "Islander"'' (1932).
Harry Clifford Pidgeon was born 31 August 1869 on a farm in Iowa. His father, Isaac Marion Pidgeon, was married 3 times and had a total of 12 children. The family were Quakers. At the age of 15, he set out for California where he found work on a ranch. Before long, he traveled north to Alaska, where he took a raft down the Yukon River and spent some time sailing among the small islands of the southeastern Alaskan coast. Later, he returned to California and traveled and worked in the Sierra Nevada mountains, taking up a career in photography.
Clara Adams
She was the first passenger on round-trip commercial flights across the Pacific, between New York and Bermuda, and between San Francisco and New Zealand. However, she is remembered primarily as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a ticketed passenger aboard the Graf Zeppelin on its return flight from New York in October 1928. Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, on the outbound flight of the same journey, as a journalist. Adams also was the first woman to fly aboard the Dornier DO-X between New York and Rio de Janeiro and she was one of 11 women aboard the maiden flight of the Hindenburg. Despite the end of public interest of airships due to the Hindenburg disaster, Adams was still eager to fly on airships.
History of aviation
The first flight by Orville Wright, of in 12 seconds, was recorded in a famous photograph. In the fourth flight of the same day, Wilbur Wright flew in 59 seconds. The flights were witnessed by three coastal lifesaving crewmen, a local businessman, and a boy from the village, making these the first public flights and the first well-documented ones.
Louis Blériot
Louis Charles Joseph Blériot (1 July 1872 – 1 August 1936) was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for cars and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. Blériot was the first to use a combination of hand/arm-operated joystick and foot-operated rudder control, that is in use to the present day, for the basic format of aerodynamic aircraft control systems. Blériot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. In 1909 he became world-famous for making the first airplane flight across the English Channel, winning the prize of £1,000 offered by the "Daily Mail" newspaper. He was the founder of a successful aircraft manufacturing company.
Everard Calthrop
Calthrop was a close personal friend of Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame. Rolls was a pioneer aviator, being the first man to fly across the English Channel in both directions. On 12 July 1910 Calthrop accompanied him to the Bournemouth International Aviation Meeting, and was present when Rolls died after he lost control of his biplane and crashed. That and a similar, non-fatal, accident involving his son Tev, led Calthrop to believe that a parachute could be used to save pilots in similar circumstances.
Order of Magellan
The Order of Magellan is an honor bestowed on distinguished individuals who have circumnavigated the earth and who, to the course of their career, have contributed to the world of science or the environment or future progress through peace and understanding. 
Among the pantheon of winners of this award are Douglas MacArthur, philanthropist and mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, Dr. William Walsh, who started Project Hope, oceanographer and underwater archaeologist Dr. Robert Ballard, oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and astronaut and United States Senator John Glenn. The Magellan Award is the highest award bestowed by the Circumnavigators Club, founded in 1902. 
The honor is named after the Portuguese born explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, who is widely known as the first captain to sail around the world—though he didn't complete the circumnavigation as he died during the voyage in the Philippines, that being the Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, who took over command of the expedition after Magellan's death, and completed the trip.
History of aviation
The Englishman Horatio Phillips made key contributions to aerodynamics. He conducted extensive wind tunnel research on aerofoil sections, proving the principles of aerodynamic lift foreseen by Cayley and Wenham. His findings underpin all modern aerofoil design.
Otto Lilienthal became known as the "Glider King" or "Flying Man" of Germany. He duplicated Wenham's work and greatly expanded on it in 1884, publishing his research in 1889 as "Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation" ("Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst"). He also produced a series of hang gliders, including bat-wing, monoplane and biplane forms, such as the Derwitzer Glider and Normal soaring apparatus. Starting in 1891 he became the first person to make controlled untethered glides routinely, and the first to be photographed flying a heavier-than-air machine, stimulating interest around the world. He rigorously documented his work, including photographs, and for this reason is one of the best known of the early pioneers. Lilienthal made over 2,000 glides until his death in 1896 from injuries sustained in a glider crash.
Graham Hughes
Graham David Hughes is a British adventurer, filmmaker, television presenter and Guinness World Record holder. Hughes was the first person to visit all 193 United Nations member states and several other territories across the world without flying. He did so over a period of nearly four years and completed the task in November 2012.
Clinton F. Woolsey
Clinton Fisk Woolsey (August 29, 1894 – February 26, 1927) was an early United States Army aviator and flying instructor. He served as a pilot in World War 1 and on the Mexican border. Woolsey was slated to become the first pilot to travel over the Atlantic Ocean when, as part of the 22,000 mile first ever Pan American Goodwill flight of 1926-27 to 23 countries in Central and South America, he died in a crash over Buenos Aires while piloting the "Detroit". He was one of the last pilots to instruct Charles Lindbergh, and it was Lindbergh who fulfilled Woolsey's vision of flying over the Atlantic three months after his death.
Georges Legagneux
Georges Legagneux (1882-1914) was a French pioneer aviator, the first person to fly higher than 10,000 feet and the first to fly a plane in Austria, Sweden and Russia.
Timeline of the Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation
The Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation was the first voyage around the world in human history. It was a Spanish expedition that sailed from Seville in 1519 under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese, in search of a maritime path from Spain to East Asia through the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean, and concluded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano in 1522. Elcano and the 18 survivors of the expedition were the first men to circumnavigate the globe in a single expedition.
Airplane
Between 1867 and 1896, the German pioneer of human aviation Otto Lilienthal developed heavier-than-air flight. He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful gliding flights.
Henri Brégi
Henri Brégi (1888–1917) was a French pioneer aviator. He was the first person to fly an aeroplane in Argentina.
Keith Macpherson Smith
Sir Keith Macpherson Smith KBE, (20 December 1890 – 19 December 1955) was an Australian aviator, who, along with his brother, Sir Ross Macpherson Smith and two other men, became the first people to fly from England to Australia.
First Flights with Neil Armstrong
First Flights was a half-hour televised aviation history documentary series. The series premiered on September 25, 1991, on A&E Networks and ran for three seasons. It was hosted by former test pilot and astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon.
Bennett Griffin
Bennett Hill Griffin (September 22, 1895 – April 26, 1978) was an American aviator. Griffin was born in Mississippi in 1895, but was raised in Oklahoma arriving around 1900. In 1932, Griffin along with Jimmie Mattern attempted to break the world record for aerial circumnavigation set by Wiley Post and Harold Gatty. In 1946 / 1947, he administered the relocation of the Civil Aeronautics Administration center from Houston to Oklahoma City, where it later became known as the FAA's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center. He served as the Director of Washington National Airport from 1947 until 1959. In 1941, he was also the first pilot to land at National Airport, flying for American Airlines at the time. He died in 1978 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Bessie Raiche
Bessica Faith Raiche née Medlar, known as Bessie Raiche, (April 1875 – 11 April 1932) was a dentist, businesswoman, and physician, who was the first woman in the United States accredited with flying solo in an airplane. Her accomplishment, although dimmed by the existence of another flight by a US female earlier in the month, is impressive because she had received no flight instruction or experience prior to her flight.
James Tytler
James Tytler (17 December 1745 – 11 January 1804) was a Scottish apothecary and the editor of the second edition of "Encyclopædia Britannica". Tytler became the first person in Britain to fly by ascending in a hot air balloon (1784).
Letitia Ann Sage
Letitia Ann Sage (née Hoare; c.1750–1817) was the first British woman to fly, making her ascent on 29 June 1785, in a balloon launched by Vincenzo Lunardi from St George's Fields in London.
Elia Liut
Elia Antonio Liut (Fiume Veneto, March 6, 1894 - Quito, May 12, 1952) was an Italian aviator who was the first to fly across the Andes of Ecuador, where he is regarded as a national hero.
Alys McKey Bryant
Alys McKey Bryant (1880–1954) was an American aviator. She was the first woman to fly on the Pacific Coast and in Canada, and one of the few female members of the Early Birds of Aviation—individuals who had solo piloted an aircraft prior to December 17, 1916. She cut short her brief career as a pilot after her husband, John Bryant, died while performing an air show in Victoria, Canada, in August 1913. During World War I she trained pilots.
Edson Fessenden Gallaudet
Edson Fessenden Gallaudet (April 21, 1871 in Washington, DC – July 1, 1945) in Pine Orchard, Connecticut) was a pioneer in the field of aviation, being the first person to experiment with warped wings in 1896. In 1898 he built a warping-wing kite to test his invention of a warping-wing mechanism; this kite survives and is on display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. In 1911 he obtained US pilot's license No. 32 with the Aero Club of America, flying a Wright biplane in Garden City, New York. Also in 1911 he earned a pilot's brevet with the Aero Club of France flying a Nieuport monoplane.
Charles A. Levine
Levine entered the competition for an Orteig prize for the first person to complete a nonstop flight from New York to Paris. His Bellanca designed prototype aircraft, named "Columbia", was ready for weeks, The co-pilot for the effort, Lloyd W. Bertaud, was displaced to accommodate Levine and went to court to be reinstated. Levine got the order lifted, but it was hours after Charles Lindbergh, in the Spirit of St. Louis, had left Roosevelt Field on Long Island. Levine's plane was still in its hangar at the same airport. Lindbergh won the prize on May 20, 1927. The following day Levine announced that his airplane would fly farther on a $15,000 transatlantic flight challenge from America to Germany and carry a passenger. The pilot was Clarence Chamberlin, and Levine would be the passenger. In an oft-repeated situation, Levine told his wife he was just going up for a test flight. His lawyer notified her by a letter of his intentions after they took off and kept going. On June 4, 1927 The Columbia took off on its transatlantic flight from America to Berlin, Germany with Levine, as the first passenger to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. The Columbia did not reach Berlin, but landed 100 miles short in a field at Eisleben, Germany. The trip was 315 miles (507 km) and 9 hours and 6 minutes longer than Lindbergh's transatlantic crossing.
Gustav Hamel
Late in 1913, looping the loop was perfected and became a popular event during public flying displays. On 2 January 1914, Hamel took Eleanor Trehawke Davies aloft to experience a loop, and she thus became the first woman in the world to do so. On 2 February he gave an exhibition of looping to the Royal Family at Windsor, making 14 loops before landing on the East Lawn of Windsor Castle. After lunch with the Royal family he gave a second exhibition before returning to Hendon.
In March 1914 Hamel flew to Cardiff to give a public flying display. While there he met Charles Horace Watkins, who was an engineer perfecting his own aircraft called the Robin Gôch, or Red Robin. Contemporary newspaper reports indicate that a few minutes after they met, Hamel flew them both to Watkins' hangar, where they inspected the Robin Gôch.
Samuel Franklin Cody
Samuel Franklin Cowdery (later known as Samuel Franklin Cody; 6 March 1867 – 7 August 1913, born Davenport, Iowa, USA) was a Wild West showman and early pioneer of manned flight. He is most famous for his work on the large kites known as "Cody War-Kites", that were used by the British in World War I as a smaller alternative to balloons for artillery spotting. He was also the first man to fly an aeroplane in Britain, on 16 October 1908. A flamboyant showman, he was often confused with Buffalo Bill Cody, whose surname he took when young.
Ben Carlin
Frederick Benjamin "Ben" Carlin (27 July 1912 – 7 March 1981) was an Australian adventurer who was the first and only person to circumnavigate the world in an amphibious vehicle. Born in Northam, Western Australia, Carlin attended Guildford Grammar School in Perth, and later studied mining engineering at the Kalgoorlie School of Mines. After qualifying as an engineer, he worked on the Goldfields before in 1939 emigrating to China to work in a British coal mine. In the Second World War, Carlin was posted to the Indian Army Corps of Engineers, serving in India, Italy, and throughout the Middle East. After his discharge from service in 1946, he emigrated to the United States with his American wife, Elinore (née Arone).
Richard Norton (pilot)
Richard D. Norton (c. 1939 – 1998) was an American pilot, scientist, and explorer. He was the pilot of the first single engine plane to fly around the world via the North and South Poles in 1987.
Dick Merrill
At a time when record-breaking pilots were treated as celebrities, pioneer aviators like Dick Merrill gained a unique status. His most famous flight was a 1936 round-trip transatlantic flight that has gone down in the annals of flight as the "Ping Pong Flight." The following year, Merrill also completed the first commercial trans-Atlantic flight.
Born February 1, 1894 at Iuka, Mississippi, "Dick" Merrill was born into a family that prided itself as being descended from the famous frontier pioneer, Daniel Boone. Although his full name was Henry Tyndall, the name "Dick" was a childhood moniker that stuck with him for life. Brought up as a devout Catholic, he was a teetotaler in an age when the "hard-drinking" "fun-loving" aerial adventurer was seen as the norm. Considered very easy-going yet serious, his one foible, however, was that he was an inveterate gambler throughout his life.
Tryggve Gran
Jens Tryggve Herman Gran (20 January 1888 – 8 January 1980) was a Norwegian aviator, explorer and author. He was the skiing expert on the 1910–13 Scott Antarctic Expedition and was the first person to fly across the North Sea in a heavier-than-air aircraft.
Auguste Piccard
Auguste Antoine Piccard (28 January 1884 – 24 March 1962) was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer, known for his record-breaking helium-filled balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere. Auguste was also known for his invention of the first bathyscaphe, "FNRS-2", with which he made a number of unmanned dives in 1948 to explore the ocean's depths. Piccard was also the first person to witness views of earth from 10 miles up. Piccard and a fellow observer witnessed this view of Earth during a balloon flight in 1931. Bertrand Piccard, his grandson, claims Auguste Piccard is the first man to witness the curvature of the earth with his own eyes.
Jeannette Piccard
After Thomas G. W. Settle's record flight in the Piccards' "Century of Progress", the balloon was again returned to the Piccards, who decided to fly it to the stratosphere on their own. Jean would concentrate on the science, while Jeannette would pilot the balloon. DeVorkin wrote that, "Energetic and forceful, she seemed to have a better chance of obtaining a pilot's license than Jean, who was preoccupied with restoring the gondola and balloon and convincing scientists to provide instruments to fly". She studied at Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan, under Edward J. Hill, a balloonist and Gordon Bennett Cup winner, who agreed to serve as flight director for the Piccards' planned stratospheric flight. Henry Ford offered the use of his hangar and brought Orville Wright (with his brother Wilbur, inventor of the airplane and first human to fly a heavier-than-air powered aircraft) to observe a flight of Jeannette's in 1933. Her son Don was a crew member that day and shook hands with Wright, "I was a little kid and he [paid] attention to me." On June 16, 1934, Jeannette flew her first solo flight. Later that year, the National Aeronautic Association made her the first woman licensed balloon pilot in the U.S. Auguste wrote to Jean in June 1934, "Hopefully you will make your flight ahead of other competitors. It would be nice, if the name of Piccard through Jeannette, would once more be placed on the record list of the F.A.I."
Claims to the first powered flight
Richard Pearse of New Zealand is credited by some in his country with making the first powered airplane flight on 31 March 1903. He did not claim the feat himself and gave ambiguous information about the chronology of his work. Biographer Geoffrey Rodliffe wrote, "no responsible researcher has ever claimed that he achieved fully controlled flight before the Wright brothers, or indeed at any time".
Bungaree
Bungaree, or Boongaree, (1775 – 24 November 1830) was an Aboriginal Australian from the Kuringgai people of the Broken Bay area north of Sydney, who was known as an explorer, entertainer, and Aboriginal community leader. He is also significant in that he was the first person to be recorded in print as an Australian, and thus the first Australian to circumnavigate the continent.
Dodge Morgan
Dodge David Morgan (January 15, 1932 – September 14, 2010) was an American sailor, businessman, publisher and "self-proclaimed contrarian." He flew fighter jets in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s, worked as a newspaper reporter in Alaska, and became a millionaire by operating Controlonics, a company that manufactured Whistler radar detectors from 1971 to 1983. He gained fame in 1986 as the first American to sail solo around the world with no stops; Dodge was the third person to ever accomplish the feat and set eleven world records during his voyage including the fastest ever solo, non-stop circumnavigation. He also set a world record for eastward sailing when he completed his journey in 150 days, cutting the prior record of 292 days nearly in half. He spent his later years living on a 30-acre island that he purchased in 1998 in Maine's Quahog Harbor.
History of aviation
In the seventeenth century, the Algerian historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari stated that the Andalusian scientist Abbas ibn Firnas (810–887 A.D.) made a jump in Cordoba, Spain, covering his body with vulture feathers and attaching two wings to his arms. No other sources record the event. Writing in the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury stated that the eleventh century Benedictine monk Eilmer of Malmesbury attached wings to his hands and feet and flew a short distance. Beyond those based on William's account, there are no other known sources documenting Eilmer's life.
Scaled Composites
Before SpaceShipOne, Rutan was best known for his Voyager aircraft, which his brother, Dick Rutan, and Jeana Yeager flew around the world without refueling in 1986. In 2005, the single-jet Global Flyer was flown by billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett on the first solo non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world, and later in the longest flight in history: .
Hermann Köhl
Hermann Köhl (15 April 1888 – 7 October 1938) was a German aviation pioneer and pilot of the first transatlantic flight by a fixed-wing aircraft from East to West.
Georg Carstensen
Georg's sister, Annette Adelaide Christine Carstensen, was the mother of Sir Robert Hay-Drummond-Hay, whose second wife Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay was the first woman to travel airborne from Europe to the US as well as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in the air. Both of these were achieved aboard a Zeppelin.
Space propaganda
For more information go to Yuri Gagarin.
Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. This was a monumental event not only in Soviet history but also world history. It was therefore only natural that a cult of personality developed around the man who was the first in space. His achievement made him and instant celebrity and international hero. The story of Yuri Gagarin made his hero status even more deserving. He was from a common background and was not a rich man. His wife recalled a story about a time they were thrown out of a house in Germany and had to live in a dugout of a garden for three years. Gagarin had a thirst for knowledge which inspired people to study hard. Also Gagarin was known to have a warm and charming personality with a wonderful sense of humor. As his popularity soared, it also became threatening. President Kennedy did not let Yuri Gagarin tour the United States because he was so popular. The end of his life was seen as such a tragedy that it only added to his popularity. Yuri Gagarin's story was told to millions of people throughout the world. Books, magazines, TV shows, movies have all been created to honor this man. Posters and stamps were issued with Yuri's face on it. April 12 is known as the Day of Space in Russia to commemorate Yuri Gagarin's flight.
Friedrich Karl von Koenig-Warthausen
Friedrich Karl Richard Paul August Freiherr Koenig von und zu Warthausen (2 April 1906–15 December 1986) was a German aviator who made the first solo flight around the world in 1928-29. His flight took him eastwards from Berlin to Moscow, then to the Persian Gulf, across northern India and to Siam. He travelled mostly by ship to China and Japan, then across the Pacific Ocean. After flying across the United States, he again took a ship back to Europe, ending his flight in Hanover after 15 months. For this feat he was awarded the Hindenburg Cup.
Jan Nagórski
Jan Nagórski (1888–1976), also known as "Ivan Nagurski", was a Polish engineer and pioneer of aviation, the first person to fly an airplane in the Arctic and the first aviator to perform a loop with a flying boat.
Anka Lambreva
Anka Vassileva Lambreva () (22 February 1895 – 18 February 1976) was a Bulgarian nurse, teacher and adventurer. She became the first Bulgarian woman to fly across the English Channel and circumnavigate the world.
Nancy Bird Walton
Born in Kew, New South Wales, Australia on 16 October 1915 as Nancy Bird, she wanted to fly almost as soon as she could walk. As a teenager during the Depression in Australia, Nancy Bird found herself in the same position as many other children of the time, leaving school at 13 to assist her family. In 1933, at the age of 18, her passion drove her to take flying lessons. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, who was the first man to fly across the mid-Pacific, had just opened a pilots' school near Sydney, and she was among his first pupils. Most women who learned to fly did so for recreation, but Nancy planned to fly for a living.
Women in aviation
Early pioneers include French Raymonde de Laroche, the world's first licensed female pilot on March 8, 1910. Seven other French women followed her, earning pilot's licenses within the next year. One of these, Marie Marvingt, 3rd Frenchwoman licensed for airplanes, but first French woman balloonist licensed in 1901, became the first woman to fly in combat completing bombing raids over Germany. Marvingt tried to get the government to outfit air ambulances prior to the war and became the world first certified Flight Nurse. Hélène Dutrieu became the first woman pilot in Belgium, obtaining the 27th license issued in her country in 1910 and the second female licensed in Europe. Later that same year, she became the first woman to fly with a passenger. In 1910, even before she earned her pilot's license, Lilian Bland a British woman living in Northern Ireland, designed and flew a glider in Belfast.
Gheorghe Bănciulescu
Gheorghe Bănciulescu (born 28 December 1898, Iaşi, Romania – 12 April 1935, Egypt), was an early aviator in Romania. He is believed to be the first pilot in the world to fly with his feet amputated.
Vladimir Komarov
Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov (; 16 March 192724 April 1967) was a Soviet test pilot, aerospace engineer and cosmonaut. In October 1964, he commanded Voskhod 1, the first spaceflight to carry more than one crew member. He became the first cosmonaut to fly in space twice when he was selected as the solo pilot of Soyuz 1, the first manned test flight of a new spacecraft. A parachute failure caused his Soyuz capsule to crash into the ground after re-entry on 24 April 1967, making him the first human to die in a space flight.
Mikhail Farikh
Mikhail Rostislavovich Farikh (Russian: Фарих Михаил Ростиславович) (June 6, 1959, Moscow — April 18, 2016 Bely) was a private helicopter pilot and the first Russian to go around the world by helicopter and to reach the North Pole. He held world records in helicopter competitions. He helped popularize light aviation and was a prominent activist in the world of Russian GA. He was also an active member of the aviation organization .
Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight
In 1928, Amelia Earhart gains fame by undertaking a transatlantic flight, albeit as a passenger. Her marriage to media tycoon George Palmer Putnam and a series of record-breaking flights propel her to international fame as a long-distance flyer. With help from a close friend and adviser, Paul Mantz, Earhart and her navigator, the hard-drinking Fred Noonan, undertake her longest flight ever: a round-the-world attempt in 1937. The airplane disappears, and a massive search effort is unsuccessful, but solidifies Earhart as an aviation icon.
Tony Jannus
Antony Habersack Jannus, more familiarly known as Tony Jannus (July 22, 1889 – October 12, 1916), was an early American pilot whose aerial exploits were widely publicized in aviation's pre-World War I period. He flew the first airplane from which a parachute jump was made, in 1912. Jannus was also the first airline pilot, having pioneered the inaugural flight of the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line on January 1, 1914, the first scheduled commercial airline flight in the world using heavier-than-air aircraft. The "Tony Jannus Award", created to perpetuate his legacy, recognizes outstanding individual achievement in the scheduled commercial aviation industry and is conferred annually by the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society founded in Tampa, Florida, in 1963.
Jennifer Murray
Jennifer Murray (born June 1940 in Providence, Rhode Island) circumnavigated the globe aboard a Robinson R44 helicopter the distance of 36,000 miles in 97 days in 2000, earning her the Guinness World Record for the first helicopter circumnavigation by a woman.In August 1997, she flew around the world with Quentin Smith in her Robinson R44, setting a speed record. On 6 September 2000, Murray became the first woman to make a solo flight around the world in a helicopter. The journey took 97 days.
Tobias Furneaux
Captain Tobias Furneaux (21 August 1735 – 18 September 1781) was an English navigator and Royal Navy officer, who accompanied James Cook on his second voyage of exploration. He was one of the first men to circumnavigate the world in both directions, and later commanded a British vessel during the American Revolutionary War.
Gagarin (crater)
The crater is named for Yuri Gagarin, the cosmonaut who was the first human in space and the first to orbit the Earth. The Six craters falling within the perimeter of Gagarin have also been named after pioneers of Russian aviation and astronautics, including Isaev, Grave, Balandin, Raspletin, Kosberg, and Andronov.
Sailing Alone Around the World
Sailing Alone Around the World is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum in 1900 about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop "Spray". Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone. The book was an immediate success and highly influential in inspiring later travelers.
Euan Dickson
Euan Dickson DSC and bar, DFC (31 March 1892 – 10 March 1980) was a British born New Zealander bomber pilot in the First World War. Serving with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and subsequently the Royal Air Force (RAF) he flew over 150 missions flying the D.H.4 aircraft. As well as flying so many bombing missions he, and his observer, was also credited with shooting down 14 enemy aircraft. After the war he returned to New Zealand and was the first person to fly across the Cook Strait.
Peter Twiss
Lionel Peter Twiss & Bar (23 July 1921 – 31 August 2011) was a British test pilot who holds the World Air Speed Record as the first man to fly a jet aircraft faster than .
Pan American World Airways
During World War II most Clippers were pressed into military service. Pan Am pioneered a new air route across Western and Central Africa to Iran. In January 1942, the "Pacific Clipper" completed the first circumnavigation of the globe by a commercial airliner. Another first occurred in January 1943, when Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly abroad, in the "Dixie Clipper". During this period "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry was a Clipper pilot; he was aboard the "Clipper Eclipse" when it crashed in Syria on June 19, 1947.
Gérard Moss
Gérard Moss, MBE (born 16 May 1955) is a Swiss-Brazilian pilot, engineer, public speaker, environmentalist and explorer born in England. As a pilot, Gerard is known for being the first person to complete a solo flight in a motor glider around the world. Gérard and his wife Margi Moss are naturalized citizens of Brazil and until as late as 2012 were the only South Americans considered Earthrounders.
History of aviation
Australian Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was the first to fly across the larger Pacific Ocean in the Southern Cross. His crew left Oakland, California to make the first trans-Pacific flight to Australia in three stages. The first (from Oakland to Hawaii) was 2,400 miles, took 27 hours 25 minutes and was uneventful. They then flew to Suva, Fiji 3,100 miles away, taking 34 hours 30 minutes. This was the toughest part of the journey as they flew through a massive lightning storm near the equator. They then flew on to Brisbane in 20 hours, where they landed on 9 June 1928 after approximately 7,400 miles total flight. On arrival, Kingsford Smith was met by a huge crowd of 25,000 at Eagle Farm Airport in his hometown of Brisbane. Accompanying him were Australian aviator Charles Ulm as the relief pilot, and the Americans James Warner and Captain Harry Lyon (who were the radio operator, navigator and engineer). A week after they landed, Kingsford Smith and Ulm recorded a disc for Columbia talking about their trip. With Ulm, Kingsford Smith later continued his journey being the first in 1929 to circumnavigate the world, crossing the equator twice.
Lola Odujinrin
Lola was born in the UK and moved to Nigeria at a young age. When he was 20 years old he qualified for his Private Pilot License (PPL) in 19 days. Lola was trained in the UK and US flying for Arik Air for five years before working for Air Djibouti. Since earning his commercial license in 2011 Lola has logged over 4,000 hours as a commercial Boeing 737 pilot. On March 29th 2017 Lola completed his journey and became the first African and the ninth British pilot to fly around the world solo. Lola is one of only 117 people in the world to have achieved this, more people have currently flown into space than have flown around the world solo.
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier () was a French chemistry and physics teacher, and one of the first pioneers of aviation. He and François Laurent d'Arlandes made the first manned free balloon flight on 21 November 1783, in a Montgolfier balloon. He later died when his balloon crashed near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais during an attempt to fly across the English Channel. He and his companion, Pierre Romain, thus became the first known fatalities in an air crash. He also risked himself while researching the flammability of hydrogen: in "A Short History of Nearly Everything", Bill Bryson writes "In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face."
Jeannette Piccard
Her flight set the women's altitude record, and held it for 29 years, until Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 became the first woman in space, orbiting the Earth 48 times solo in the Soviet Union's Vostok 6. According to the editors of "Flying" magazine, in their book "Sport Flying", published by Ziff-Davis in 1976, Jeannette was "the first woman in space, a claim allowed even by Valentina Tereshkova." She was also the first woman to pilot a flight to the stratosphere, and according to her obituary in "The New York Times", the first person to do so through a layer of clouds.
Tydeo Larre Borges
Tydeo Larre Borges (Paysandú, 25 September 1893-Montevideo, 1 September 1984) was a Uruguayan army officer and aviator, pioneer in the South American and international aviation. He was the first South American to cross the South Atlantic Ocean, flying with no scales with the French pilot Léon Challe on December 15, 1929 from Sevilla, Spain and arriving on December 17, 1929 near Maracajaú, Brazil.
Gustave Whitehead
In 1945, Whitehead's son Charles was interviewed on Joseph Nathan Kane's national radio program "Famous Firsts" as the son of the first man to fly. That claim was repeated in a "Liberty" magazine article, which was condensed in a "Reader's Digest" article that reached a very large audience. Orville Wright, then in his seventies, countered the magazine articles by writing "The Mythical Whitehead Flight", which appeared in the August 1945 issue of "U.S. Air Services," a publication with a far smaller but very influential readership.
Henri Coandă
Henri Marie Coandă (; 7 June 1886 – 25 November 1972) was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer, and builder of an experimental aircraft, the Coandă-1910 described by Coandă in the mid-1950s as the world's first jet, a controversial claim disputed by some and supported by others. He invented a great number of devices, designed a "flying saucer" and discovered the Coandă effect of fluid dynamics.
Montgolfier brothers
Since the animals survived, the king allowed flights with humans. Again in collaboration with Réveillon, Étienne built a balloon for the purpose of making flights with humans.It was about seventy-five feet (23 m) tall and about fifty feet (15 m) in diameter. Réveillon supplied rich decorative touches of gold figures on a deep blue background, including fleur-de-lis, signs of the zodiac, and suns with Louis XVI's face in the center interlaced with the royal monogram in the central section. Red and blue drapery and golden eagles were at the base of the balloon. Étienne Montgolfier was the first human to lift off the Earth, making a tethered test flight from the yard of the Réveillon workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, most likely on 15 October 1783. A little while later on that same day, physicist Pilâtre de Rozier became the second to ascend into the air, to an altitude of , which was the length of the tether.
On 21 November 1783, the first free flight by humans was made by Pilâtre de Rozier, together with an army officer, the marquis d'Arlandes. The flight began from the grounds of the Château de la Muette close to the Bois de Boulogne park in the western outskirts of Paris. They flew about above Paris for a distance of nine kilometers. After 25 minutes, the balloon landed between the windmills, outside the city ramparts, on the Butte-aux-Cailles. Enough fuel remained on board at the end of the flight to have allowed the balloon to fly four to five times as far. However, burning embers from the fire were scorching the balloon fabric and had to be daubed out with sponges. As it appeared it could destroy the balloon, Pilâtre took off his coat to stop the fire.
Horatio Barber
Captain Horatio Claude Barber (1875–1964) was an early British aviation pioneer and First World War flight instructor. In 1911 he flew the first cargo flight in Britain, transporting electric light bulbs from Shoreham to Hove. He was also the first person in Great Britain to gain an aeronautical degree.
Erik Lindbergh
Erik Charles Lindbergh (born 1965) is an aviator, adventurer, and an artist. He is the grandson of pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly non-stop between New York and Paris in 1927. In 2002 Erik Lindbergh honored the 75th anniversary of his grandfather's historic flight by retracing the journey in his own single-engine aircraft. The journey was documented by the History Channel, raised over one million dollars for three charities, garnered half a billion media impressions for the X PRIZE Foundation and prompted a call from United States President George W. Bush for inspiring the country after the tragedy of September 11.
Steve Fossett
James Stephen "Steve" Fossett (April 22, 1944 – September 3, 2007) was an American businessman and a record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer. He was the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon. He made his fortune in the financial services industry and was best known for many world records, including five nonstop circumnavigations of the Earth: as a long-distance solo balloonist, as a sailor, and as a solo flight fixed-wing aircraft pilot.
Robert G. Fowler
Robert George Fowler (August 10, 1884 – June 15, 1966) was an early aviation pioneer and was the first person to make a west-to-east transcontinental flight in stages.