After nine days and four minutes in the sky, the experimental
aircraft Voyager landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load
of fuel.

Piloted by Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager was
made mostly of plastic and stiffened paper and carried more than
three times its weight in fuel when it took off from Edwards Air
Force Base on December 14. By the time it returned, after flying
25,012 miles around the planet, it had just five gallons of fuel left
in its remaining operational fuel tank.

The crew: Dick Rutan and friend Jeanna Yeager.
(no relation to aviator Chuck Yeager)

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in
Washington DC.

 
The crew of “Little Joe”, with Sanford G. Roy circled in red.   Defense (POW/MIA) Accounting Agency.

According to military officials this week, the remains of a World
War II airman were identified 80 years after his plane was shot
down during a bombing mission in Germany.

In the spring of 1944, U.S. Army Air Force Tech. Sgt. Sanford G.
Roy, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, was assigned to the 732nd Bombardment Squadron in the European Theater. 

A news release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency 
said Roy and several other airmen were aboard the B-24H
Liberator "Little Joe" on a bombing mission to Brunswick,
Germany on April 8.

The plane was shot down by German forces and other airmen
flying near the aircraft did not report seeing any crew members
exiting "Little Joe" before it crashed. His name was engraved
on the Walls of the Missing at the Netherlands American
Cemetery. 

Sanford G. Roy.

On July 2, 1937, the Lockheed aircraft carrying American aviator
Amelia Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan is reported
missing near Howland Island in the Pacific.

The pair were attempting to fly around the world when they lost
their bearings during the most challenging leg of the global journey:
Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, a tiny island 2,227 nautical
miles away, in the center of the Pacific Ocean.

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012)

On June 18, 1983,  the space shuttle Challenger was launched
into space on its second mission. On board the shuttle is Dr. 
Sally K. Ride, who as a mission specialist, became the first
American woman to travel into space. 

Ride, who had earlier pursued a professional tennis career,
answered a newspaper ad in 1977 from NASA calling for
young tech-savvy scientists who could work as mission
specialists. She died of pancreatic cancer at age 61.

              
Presidential Medal of Freedom
         (2013, posthumous)

On June 3, 1965, 120 miles above the Earth, Major Edward H.
White II opened the hatch of the Gemini 4 and steps out of the
capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in
space. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling
his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun,
White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes. 

White had been preceded by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A.
Leonov, who on March 18, 1965, was the first man ever to 
walk in space.

     
     
     
     
   
Edward Higgins White II 
(November 14, 1930 – January 27, 1967