Today, Howard Hughes flies the "Spruce Goose," a massive wooden airplane, for the first and only time in 1947.
The Hughes Flying Boat, once the biggest aircraft ever built, is flown on its first and only flight by creator Howard Hughes. The gigantic wooden aircraft, built of laminated birch and spruce (thus the moniker the Spruce Goose), had a wingspan larger than a football field and was planned to transport more than 700 men to battle. When Howard Hughes created the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, he was a renowned Hollywood movie producer. He personally tested cutting-edge aircraft of his own design and set a transcontinental flight time record in 1937. He flew around the world in three days, 19 hours, and 14 minutes in 1938.
Related On This Day
Today, Amar Bose, an American entrepreneur and professor, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1929.
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Today, in Springfield, Illinois, American socialite Mary Todd marries Illinois Congressman and lawyer Abraham Lincoln in 1842.
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Tabu [Tabassum Hashmi], an Indian actress, was born today in Hyderabad, India, in 1972.
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Today, Howard Carter discovers Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt in 1922.
Kendall Jenner, an American model and television personality, was born in Los Angeles, California in 1995.
Today, the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2 in 1957, with space dog Laika, a mostly-Siberian husky, onboard, becoming the first animal in orbit.
Today, Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, becoming the first African-American to do so, beating Republican contender John McCain.
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