The 747 entered commercial service on January 22, 1970, on Pan Am’s  New York to London route.The flight had been originally planned for the evening of January 21, but an engine overheating problem made that aircraft unstable. Finding a substitute delayed the flight by more than six hours to the following day. 

                                           Pan Am stewardesses

Buzz Aldrin , retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history. On July 20, 1969, he was the second human being to set foot on the Moon, following mission commander Neil Armstrong.

                                       Aldrin on the Moon

Eugene B. Ely (above) made the first successful landing of an aircraft
on a floating vessel when he flew his Curtiss Pusher onto the deck of  
the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay. He was 24 years old.

 
Aviation pioneer and author Amelia Earhart made a flight from
Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California, becoming the first
woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean. The plane she
flew on that trip, a Lockheed Vega, is on display at the
National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. 

 
Amelia Earhart posing by her plane at the Oakland airport

 
The Lockheed Vega 5B at the National Air and Space Museum

 
Rick Nelson and his band were on their way to a New Year’s Eve
sock-hop in Dallas, Texas when a fire broke out aboard their 
plane, a Douglas DC-3. The pilots were forced to make a crash  
landing northeast of Dallas. Nelson and his fiancee were killed   
along with five members of his band. Both pilots were able to 
escape through the cockpit windows and survived. After an 
investigation into the crash, the cause was found to be a 
mechanical problem with the cabin heater. 

   
                               The crash site in De Kalb, Texas

 
Nelson’s grave marker at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, Cal.