Chinese kites are designed for use in religious ceremonies and military operations.
King Bladud, ruler of the Britons, builds some wings out of feathers and tries to fly. He plunges to the ground and dies.
Leonardo da Vinci studies flight and how to make flying machines. He draws hundreds of sketches and plans relating to flight.
A Brazilian priest named Bartolomeu Laurenço de Gusmao creates a design of a model glider.
French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier set their hot air balloon aloft on Nov. 21, 1783, in Paris, conducting the first untethered, manned hot air balloon flight.
George Cayley publishes a design for a biplane.
Otto Lilienthal becomes the first person to make well-documented, repeated successful flights with his biplane gliders.
The Wright brothers are the first to make a successful powered flight. The first of four flights lasted 12 seconds and traveled 180 feet.
Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian living in France, takes the first powered flight in Europe, covering 197 feet at a height of 10 feet.
Bessie Coleman becomes the first African-American to earn an international pilot's license.
Charles A. Lindbergh completes a solo transatlantic flight and is the first to do so without stopping.
English aviation engineer and pilot Sir Frank Whittle invents the jet engine.
Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. She starts the journey in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, Canada, and ends it in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
New Zealander Jean Batten makes record-breaking flights worldwide. During her flight from England to New Zealand, she flew 22,891 km in 11 days, 45 minutes. This record time was unbroken for 44 years.
The Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, piloted by U.S. Air Force Capt. Charles Yeager, becomes the first plane to fly faster than the speed of sound.
The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 is the first supersonic commercial plane.
The Boeing 747 enters service as the first wide-body airliner.
The British and French Concorde starts the world's first regular supersonic commercial flights with two simultaneous take-offs: one from London, headed to Bahrain, and the other from Paris, bound for Rio de Janeiro.
Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan fly around the world in a nine-day nonstop flight that begins and ends in California.
Steve Fossett makes the first solo nonstop flight around the world, starting and ending his route in Kansas in a single-engine plane designed for the task.
Glenn Martin flies his jet pack to an altitude of 5,000 feet.
The first roadworthy aircraft is made. It can take off and land at any airport and also fold up its wings and drive down the road.
The Solar Impulse 2 is the first plane powered by renewable energy to fly around the globe.
In Canada, the first fully electric aircraft for commercial flight successfully completes testing.
