History of Flight talk - Help required
I have been asked to give a talk to some young people. The remit is to inspire them towards being pilots & engineers instead of reality TV stars. I have to cover around 10 of the most important steps in the history of flight (I can push that to about 12). To cover the first female airline pilot plus a few other similar female firsts. To predict the next big step. I have come up with “my” list of the top 24 which I have to cut down to 12 (with your help) plus my next step. For my next step I considered Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial spaceline, but decided on Mars instead. So have I missed anything important and what should make the final 12+1?
History of flight
1st Manned flight, Montgolfier brothers, 1783 France
1st Woman to fly, Élisabeth Thible, 1784 France
1st Flight over the English Channel, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, 1785 France
1st Aviation disaster, Tullamore, County Offaly, 1785 Ireland
1st Manned controlled, heavier-than-air craft, George Cayley,1853 GB
1st Woman to pilot a powered aircraft, Rose Isabel Spencer, 1902 GB
1st Fixed-wing powered, controlled flight, Orville Wright, 1903 USA
1st Flight in a manned rotary-winged craft, Paul Cornu, 1907 France
1st Female military pilot, Eugenie Shakhovskaya, 1914 Russia
1st Landing an airplane on a moving ship, Edwin Dunning, 1917 Great Britain
1st Non-stop transatlantic flight, Alcock and Brown, 1919 Great Britain
1st Female airline pilot, Marga von Etzdorf, 1927 Germany
1st Man-made object in space, V2, 1944 Germany
1st Nonstop around-the-world flight, James Gallagher, 1949 USA
1st Supersonic scheduled passenger flight, Concorde, 1976 GB / France
1st Artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, 1957 USSR
1st Human in space, Yuri Gagarin, 1961 Russia
1st First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, 1963 Russia
1st Space walk, Alexei Leonov, 1965 Russia
1st Soft landing probe on the Moon, Luna 9, 1966 USSR
1st Human on the moon, Neil Armstrong, 1969 USA
1st First space station, Salyut 1, 1971 USSR
1st Manned private spaceflight, Paul Allen, 2004 USA
1st Soft landing on a comet, Rosetta, 2014 Europe
Next big step
1st Human to land on Mars, SpaceX, 2023 USA
(I have avoided tethered flights)
Rod1