REACH FOR THE SKY
September 17 in history:
Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge became the first person to die in a plane crash on September 17th, 1908. Orville Wright was flying the plane, and Selfridge was his passenger, in a demonstration at Fort Myer, Virginia. The plane went into a nose-dive after a propeller broke.
On this date in 1916, German Baron von Richthofen, the “Red Baron,” shot down his first enemy plane during World War One. The English plane was the first of 80 that Richthofen downed before he was shot down himself a year-and-a-half later.
In the comic strip “Peanuts,” Snoopy often pretended to be a flying ace pursuing the Red Baron. NASA named the lunar module on the Apollo 10 mission “Snoopy”. Astronaut Thomas Stafford, who commanded the Apollo 10 flight, was born September 17th, 1930…the same day and year as Edgar Mitchell, who was named the backup pilot for “Snoopy” on that mission.
