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Today in 1909, Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty as part of the New York Hudson-Fulton Celebration, resulting in this historic Harper’s Weekly cover page. 

Although her flight is not considered “official,” this day in history we remember Blanche Stuart Scott, the first American woman to take a solo hop into the air.

On this day in 1909, some of the world's leading aviators met at a racetrack in Reims, France, to compete in the first organized international air meet.

Today in 1871, aviator and inventor Orville Wright was born to Milton and Susan Catherine Koerner Wright. Orville was the sixth of seven children born to the Wrights.

On August 13, 1911, Matilde Moisant became the second woman in the United States to receive her pilot’s license, just a few weeks after her friend Harriet Quimby.

On this day in 1908, Wilbur Wright publicly demonstrated a Wright aircraft for the first time in Europe at the Hunaudières racecourse at Le Mans, southwest of Paris.

On this day in 1909, the United States government purchased its first military aircraft, designed by the Wright brothers and costing $30,000.

On August 1, 1911, Harriet Quimby became the first licensed female pilot in the United States, and the second woman to receive a pilot’s license in the world.

On March 16, 1922, the staff of Aeromarine Airways in Miami, Florida, held an impromptu ice cream party. 

This Bastille Day, we take time to recognize some of the most colorful personalities in early French flight including Jules Védrines who was known as a rough-and-tumble, foul-mouthed, and unpredictable aviator and Hubert Latham who once declared to the French president that he was "a man of the world."