* Wright brothers received patent on airplane (1906).

* Otto Lilienthal, German pioneer aviator, born (1848).

* Carpenter became the second American to orbit the Earth (1962).

* The 20,000 manmade object to orbit the Earth was launched (1989).

* President John F. Kennedy started lunar landing program saying, "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth..." (1961).

* First known prediction of a solar eclipse (585 B.C.)

* Astronauts enter Skylab, the American space station, for the first time. They perform the first deployment of a "parasol" thermal shade to save Skylab and deploy a jammed solar antenna (1973).

* Sally Ride born (1951).

* The movie "Star Wars" debuted (1977).

* U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. James "Jimmy" Doolittle flies first" outside" loop over McCook Field, near Dayton, Ohio in a Curtiss P-1B Hawk. Scientists predicted outside loops (inverted loops) would be fatal (1927).

* President Kennedy announced Apollo goal‹the Moon! (1961).

* Monkeynauts, Able and Baker, flew in space (1959).

* Solar eclipse tested Einstein's theory (1919).

* European Space Agency (ESA) was founded (1975).

* NASA launched Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-6) into geosynchronous orbit for educational programming (1974).

* First successful flight from U.S. to Australia begun by two Americans and two Australians (1928). The four aviators fly in a Fokker trimotor aircraft from Oakland to Brisbane across the Pacific. The flight ends on June 8th.