January 13

2012 -- A French court on Friday fined low-cost airline EasyJet 70,000 euros ($90,000) for refusing to allow three wheelchair-bound passengers to board its planes, citing security reasons.

2012 -- For serving coffee to a passenger allegedly poisoned in 2006 on a flight Bordeaux-Paris Air France was sentenced today to pay almost 150,000 euros in damages to the victim and health insurance.
2011 --The State Labour Court of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany adjudicated on a case involving the dress and grooming habits of airport security staff who had complained that their employer's dress rules were too restrictive.

The plaintiff's hopes sagged after the court ruled that "being told to wear a bra and to keep fingernails to shorter than half-a-centimetre does not impinge on personal rights" and "is not a disproportionate impairment of personal rights." The ruling will apply to all workplaces in the most populous state in Germany. But while the court also upheld the company's right to demand that men with beards keep them well trimmed, it ruled that it cannot ban specific shades of hair color or nail polish – or wigs.

2011 -- Russia will start selling multimillion-dollar tourist tickets to the International Space Station again in 2013 after a four-year hiatus, the U.S.-based firm that organizes the paid trips said today.

Virginia-based Space Adventures will offer three 10-day trips per year to the orbital station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft under a deal with the Russian space agency Roskosmos and Soyuz manufacturer Energia, company spokesman Sergey Kostenko told Reuters.

Russia has again found room for paying private customers aboard the cramped three-seat Soyuz due to plans to increase annual production of the single-use craft--carried into orbit by Russian rockets--from four to five in 2013.

2011 -- In his third visit to Japan as Secretary of Defense – and his fourth trip to Asia in the past eight months Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, striking a conciliatory tone on an issue that has divided Japan and the United States, said that the Obama administration would follow Tokyo’s lead in working to relocate an American air base on Okinawa.

2011 -- Worried about North Korean belligerence and an increasingly aggressive China, Japan's military wants to cooperate in unprecedented ways with the United States and is even considering putting its military in the line of fire in areas outside Japan.

2011 -- South Korea and Japan have held their first talks on creating unprecedented agreements to share military intelligence and equipment.

Japan's 35-year annexation of Korea included the familiar imperialist atrocities, but perhaps none worse than the "comfort women" forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. Actual numbers vary, depending on where you're from (Korea says 200,000+; Japan says 20,000), but there's no disputing that the majority of comfort women were Korean. The debate continues today, with a recent uproar over Japanese historical textbooks denying the existence of comfort women. More recently, former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi created a stir with his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors soldiers'and convicted war criminals'who died fighting for Imperial Japan. These public visits angered Japan's neighbors, adding to widespread anti-Japan sentiment. Imagine the Chancellor of Germany paying homage to old Nazi leaders and you might get a sense of the outrage in East Asia.

South Korea currently occupies Dokdo, a group of islets between Korea and Japan that Japan claims is part of its territory. The two countries have long bickered over the area, with tensions rising in recent years. Despite lingering animosity among Koreans about Japanese colonial rule and an unresolved territorial dispute over tiny islands in valuable fishing grounds, the two countries have forged a trading partnership and renewed cultural ties. But the defense relationship is a new thing. Not everyone is comfortable with it; many Chinese feel China needs to guard against Japan, South Korea and the United States becoming an Asian version of NATO.

2011 -- The Australian airline Qantas will pay 26.5 million U.S. dollars (19.87 million) to end a class action filed in the U.S. for price fixing in its freight division.

2011 -- China prepares for record Lunar New Year travel rush in coming weeks.

Lunar New Year's day falls on February 3 this year. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are going to storm the bus and railway stations and airports for the Lunar New Year, the authorities expecting a record number of trips for this edition, official media reported.

2011 -- Russian view of J-20 Stealth Fighter.

2011 -- The French airline Aigle Azur, due to launch direct flights from Paris to Baghdad this month, was forced to postpone the project, probably until summer, because of the resurgence of insecurity in Iraq.

Aigle Azur, owned by the Franco-Algerian Idjerouidene family, had planned to offer two flights a week to Baghdad from Charles de Gaulle, Europe's second busiest air hub after London's Heathrow.

For years, many of the regional and western carriers shied away from Iraq due to safety concerns. Regional airlines such as the Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, Bahrain's Gulf Air, the Beirut-based MEA airline and Turkish Airlines fly to the Iraqi capital. But there are no direct passenger flights between Baghdad and western Europe. The Stockholm-based Nordic Airways launched commercial flights to Baghdad from Copenhagen, Denmark in January 2009 but its operating licence was revoked later that month. The German carrier, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, was slated to begin regular flights between Munich and Baghdad on Sept 30 but cancelled them due to a lack of customer interest.

2010 -- Airmen providing relief after Haiti quake.

2007 -- Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV`s documentary channel had one of its producers arrested at Cairo International Airport as she tried leaving the country with footage showing the use of torture in Egyptian detention centers.

Howayda Taha, the al-Jazeera producer, found herself charged with "harming the state`s national interest" -- meaning al-Jazeera was planning to air the torture footage. The al-Jazeera journalist was accused of fabricating images in a way that is detrimental to the country`s reputation; she was prohibited from leaving the country and had nearly 50 tapes confiscated.

1994 -- The final F-15 Eagle of the 32nd Fighter Group departs Soesterberg AB, ending 40 years of U.S. Air Force operations in the Netherlands.

1993 -- U.S. Air Force Major Susan Helms, a member of the space shuttle Endeavor crew, becomes the first U.S. military woman in space.

1993 -- American, British and French fighter jets carried out a series of bombing raids over southern Iraq.

U.S. President George Bush ordered air strikes on 32 missile sites and air defense command centers in Iraq after Iraqi troops crossed the border with Kuwait. The strikes also targeted Iraq surface-to-air-missile sites south of the 32nd parallel. The Iraqis repeatedly breached the "no-fly zone" set up after the Gulf War--which began almost two years ago--and made a number of military raids over the border into Kuwait. The Gulf War Allies targeted missile sites and aircraft command and control bases. The air raids took place early in the evening, (1700 GMT) led by American stealth fighter bombers, based in Saudi Arabia. Planes were also deployed from a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf, and British Tornado bombers and French Mirage jets joined the attack.

1991 -- The first Boeing 727-100 to come off the production line in 1964 joins the aircraft on display in the Museum of Flight in Seattle after 25 years service with United Air Lines.

1982 -- Flight 90 an Air Florida Boeing 727 plunges into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killing 78 people. The crash, caused by bad weather, took place only two miles from the White House.

YouTube videos for Flight 90:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2ww2rCbX94

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASBb-oMT5EU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz34reivAqc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oycu1pXxfaU

1978 -- NASA selected its first U.S. women astronauts:   Rhea Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnik, Sally Ride, Anna Fisher, and Shannon Lucid.

"NASA might have initially been reluctant to hire female astronauts, the agency was actually more welcoming than most to women, providing them professional job opportunities difficult to come by elsewhere in the 1960s.¹ NASA administrator James Webb in 1966 issued an order calling for equal opportunities regardless of sex, going above and beyond the federal mandates of that era. Yet the agency and those pioneering women astronauts still faced many challenges, from individual mindsets slow to adapt to the changing roles of women to little details NASA hadn’t anticipated when incorporating women into the astronaut corps, like an astronaut exercise room that had only a single locker room."

1977 -- NAS Jacksonville announced the two AV-8A Harrier aircraft had made a bow on approach and landing aboard Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This may have been the first time in Naval aviation history that a fixed-wing aircraft made a bow on, downwind landing aboard a carrier at sea. This landing, with jets facing aft, demonstrated that V/STOL aircraft could be landed aboard a carrier without many of the conditions necessary for fixed-wing, non-V/STOL aircraft.

1975 -- The U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. John L. McLucas, selects the General Dynamics YF-16 prototype as the U.S. Air Force's air combat fighter, a low-cost, lightweight, highly maneuverable fighter aircraft.

1965 -- The U.S. Air Force's XC-142A Verticle/Short Takeoff and Landing transport aircraft made a perfect first transition flight, taking off like a helicopter, adjusting its wings for conventional flight, and making a vertical landing.

1964 -- A B-52D carrying two nuclear bombs suffered a structural failure in flight that caused the tail section to shear off. Four crewmen ejected successfully before the aircraft crashed near Cumberland, Maryland. Two crewmen subsequently perished on the ground because of hypothermia, while another, who was unable to eject, died in the aircraft; both weapons were recovered. This was one of several incidents caused by failure of the vertical stabilizer.

1951 -- Far East Air Forces flew the first effective Tarzon mission against a bridge at Kanggye, Korea. The six-ton radio-guided bomb destroyed 58 feet of the enemy-held structure.

Considered a combination of the American Razon and the British Tallboy bomb, the Tarzon tipped the scales at staggering 12,000 lbs., and was credited with a circular error of probability of about 280 feet. It was also known as the MX-764 and later VB-13 (for vertical bomb), and had been developed by Bell aircraft. The Tarzon had a size problem. It was so big that half of it stuck out from the bomb-bay causing handling problems due to excessive drag. B-29s dropped 30 Tarzons in Korea, but only 6 bridges were severed.

1950 -- First flight Mikoyan-Gurevich I-330, prototype of the MiG-17.

1942 -- First flight Sikorsky XR-4 helicopter.



1942 -- Heinkel test pilot Helmut Schenk becomes the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejection seat after the control surfaces of the first prototype He 280 V1 ice up and become inoperable.

The fighter, being used in tests of the Argus As 014 impulse jets for Fieseler Fi 103 missile development, had its regular HeS 8A turbojets removed, and was towed aloft from Rechlin, Germany by a pair of Bf 110C tugs in a heavy snow-shower. At 7,875 feet, Schenk found he had no control, jettisoned his towline, and ejected.

1940 -- First flight Yakovlev Ya-26, prototype of the Yakovlev Yak-1.

1936 -- A Douglas/Northrop Gamma owned by Jackie Cochran, and leased to Howard Hughes, set a new transcontinental nonstop record flying at an average speed of 259 mph.

1923 -- John W. Paup is born.

North American engineer who managed their winning Apollo proposal and was the company's Apollo program manager 1961-1964. Replaced under NASA pressure, he died in 1968 before his spacecraft made it to the moon.

1920 -- From The New York Times:

As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even highest, part of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's multiple-charge rocket is a practicable, and therefore promising device. Such a rocket, too, might carry self-recording instruments, to be released at the limit of its flight, and conceivable parachutes would bring them safely to the ground. It is not obvious, however, that the instruments would return to the point of departure; indeed, it is obvious that they would not, for parachutes drift exactly as balloons do. And the rocket, or what was left of it after the last explosion, would have to be aimed with amazing skill, and in dead calm, to fall on the spot where it started.


But that is a slight inconvenience, at least from the scientific standpoint, though it might be serious enough from that of the always innocent bystander a few hundred or thousand yards away from the firing line. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt and looks again, to see if the dispatch announcing the professor's purposes and hopes says that he is working under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. It does say so, and therefore the impulse to do more than doubt the practicability of such a device for such a purpose must be well, controlled. Still, to be filled with uneasy wonder and express it will be safe enough, for after the rocket quits our air and and really starts on its longer journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. To claim that it would be is to deny a fundamental law of dynamics, and only Dr. Einstein and his chosen dozen, so few and fit, are licensed to do that.


That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react--to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.


But there are such things as intentional mistakes or oversights, and, as it happens, Jules Verne, who also knew a thing or two in assorted sciences--and had, besides, a surprising amount of prophetic power--deliberately seems to make the same mistake that Professor Goddard seems to make. For the Frenchman, having got his travelers to or toward the moon into the desperate fix riding a tiny satellite of the satellite, saved them from circling it forever by means of an explosion, rocket fashion, where an explosion would not have had in the slightest degree the effect of releasing them from their dreadful slavery. That was one of Verne's few scientific slips, or else it was a deliberate step aside from scientific accuracy, pardonable enough of him in a romancer, but its like is not so easily explained when made by a savant who isn't writing a novel of adventure.


All the same, if Professor Goddard's rocket attains a sufficient speed before it passes out of our atmosphere--which is a thinkable possibility--and if its aiming takes into account all of the many deflective forces that will affect its flight, it may reach the moon. That the rocket could carry enough explosive to make on impact a flash large and bright enough to be seen from earth by the biggest of our telescope--that will be believed when it is done.

1918 -- WW I Royal Flying Corps Ace Major James Thomas Byford McCudden socred his 39th, 40th, and 41st victories.

1918 -- Walter Jacobi is born.

German engineer in WW II, member of the Rocket Team in the United States thereafter.

1918 -- Canadian WW I Royal Flying Corps Ace Capt. John Victor Jack Sorsoleil flying the S.E.5a. scored his 1st of 14 victories.

1908 -- The first European to fly one kilometer in a circle is Henri Farman in his Voisin-Farman airplane.

Farmn was the man of the moment. In 1 minute and 28 seconds, he had completed Europe's--and the world's--first official, witnessed, one-kilometer circuit. Two years before, the Wrights had flown 39 times that distance near Dayton. But few in Europe knew or cared. Farman’s flight wins him the Grand Prix d’Aviation Deutsche-Archdeacon race in France. The Times of London reported, "Today has been an epoch-making event, that of the victory before official witnesses of human intelligence in its efforts to solve the problem which brought Icarus to grief, which tormented the brain of Leonardo da Vici. Nothing of this kind has ever been accomplished before." Still lacking the roll control of the Wright aircraft, Farman had flown the course in a wide, nearly flat turn, literally skidding his way to victory.

1906 -- The first air exhibition of the Aero Club of America² opens for eight days in the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory in New York City.

The Wrights are asked to send the motor that powered their 1903 flying machine but can only salvage the crankshaft and flywheel.
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¹ "When I got my PhD, it was a time when there were just no jobs for PhDs. Period. PhDs were getting the lowest paid technician jobs, if they were lucky, in any kind of science." Shannon Lucid

² E. Lillian Todd, a stenographer, exhibited an aircraft she had designed herself. Without an engine, the craft was actually a glider. In theory, the pilot would run down an incline. The rushing air would cause two fans to catch the air, begin to revolve, and would then start two propellers. The plane would then become airborne. Once flying, the incoming air would continue to revolve the propellers, keeping the craft in the air.

Miss Todd had no training in the use of tools or mechanics, but nevertheless built the craft by herself. Her designs eventually garnered attention from Andrew Carnegie and Harry Guggenheim. Among some of her ideas was planes with folding wings, and collapsible planes for easier storage and transportation.

Miss Todd founded the Junior Aero Club, and taught dozens of youngsters to build flyable model airplanes.