Marquis d'Arlandes Pilatre de Rozier 1783 --- 1st humans to fly. They were airborne in a hot-air balloon for 20 minutes, in Paris, on Nov. 21.

Orville & Wilbur Wright 1903---1st Flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.(Dec 17.)

Thomas E. Selfridge 1908 --- 1st airplane fatality. Selfridge, a Lt.in the US Army Signal Corps, was in a group evaluating the Wright plane at Fort Myer, Va. He was up 75 ft. with Orville Wright when the propeller hit a bracing wire and was broken, throwing the plane out of control, killing Selfridge and seriously injuring Wright (Sept. 17).

Baroness Raymonde de la Roche 1910 --- 1st licensed woman pilot. (of France, who learned to fly in 1909, received ticket No. 36 on March 8.)

Harriet Quimby 1911 --- 1st US woman pilot. (A magazine writer, got ticket No. 37, making her the second licensed female pilot in the world. She was also the 1st woman to fly across the English Channel. She flew from Dover, England and landed at Hardelot, France, in a Blériot monoplane(April 16). She was later killed in a flying accident over Dorchester Bay during a Harvard-Boston aviation meet on July 1, 1912. )

Bessie Coleman 1921 --- 1st US black female pilot. Was killed April 30, 1926, in flying accident.

Amelia Earhart 1932 --- 1st transatlantic solo flight by a woman. (traveling from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Ireland in approximately 15 hours)

Chuck Yeager 1947 --- 1st person to break the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound. (On October 14, 1947, he flew a Bell X-1 rocket at 670 mph in level flight.)

Jacqueline Cochrane 1953 --- 1st woman to fly faster than speed of sound. (She piloted an F-86 Sabrejet over California at an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour.)

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr 1954 --- 1st first black general in the US Air Force

Laika, the dog 1957 --- 1st living creature to orbit the earth. Aboard the Soviet satellite, Sputnik 2.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin 1961 --- 1st human in space, 1st human to orbit Earth.

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. 1961 --- 1st American in space; (Freedom 7). 2nd human in space; member of original Mercury 7.

John Glenn 1962 --- 1st US astronaut to orbit earth.

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova - Russian cosmonaut 1963 --- 1st woman in space.

Jerrie Mock 1964 --- 1st around-the-world solo flight by a woman.

Alexei Arkhovich Leonov 1965 --- 1st human to walk in space.

Edward Higgins White, Jr. 1965 --- 1st American to walk in space.

Neil Armstrong 1969 --- 1st man to walk on the moon.

Emily Warner 1973 --- 1st female commercial airline pilot in the US. (Frontier Airlines)

Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr. (Guy) 1983 --- 1st black American in space.

Sally Kristen Ride 1983 --- 1st US woman in space.

Kathryn Sullivan 1984 --- 1st female US astronaut to walk in space.

Christa Sharon McAuliffe 1986 --- 1st teacher selected for the NASA Teacher in Space program. She died, along with the rest of the crew, when the space shuttle Challenger blew up not long after launching.

Mae Carol Jemison 1992 --- 1st black woman in space (on the Endeavor.)

Barbara Harmer 1993 --- 1st woman to pilot the Concorde (March 25th.)

Shiela Widnall 1993 --- 1st secretary of a branch of the US military (appointed to head the Air Force)

Eileen Marie Collins 1995 --- 1st female space shuttle pilot. She piloted the space shuttle Discovery during a mission to rendezvous with space station Mir.

Craig Breedlove 1998 --- 1st person to break the sound barrier in a car, at Lake Bonneville, UT, with a trap speed of over 760 MPH.

Eileen Collins 1999 --- 1st woman astronaut to command a space shuttle mission.