Around 1490
- Leonardo da Vinci envisions and sketches flying machines such as helicopters.
- September: Sir George Cayley published his seminal paper On Aerial Navigation, setting out for the first time the scientific principles of heavier-than-air flight.
- Late June or early July: Sir George Cayley's coachman became the world's first aeroplane pilot, flying a glider designed by his employer for 423ft (130m) across a valley in Brompton, Yorkshire.
- Otto Lilienthal: first controlled glider flights. Often called the first pilot. Breaks his spine on the 2500th flight.
- Samuel Pierpont Langley flies the heavier-than-air powered unmanned aircraft Aerodrome.
- Clement Ader: first powered heavier-than-air flight (but uncontrolled).
- November: Lawrence Hargrave demonstrates stable flight with a tethered box kite.
- Octave Chanute publishes his book Progress in Flying Machines, the first history of aviation and highly influential on many early pioneers, including the Wright Brothers.
- Percy Pilcher flies various gliders and is close to completing a powered machine when he is tragically killed.
- March 31 : Richard Pearse reputed to have made an uncontrolled powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, a monoplane of his own construction, that crash lands on a hedge. (This date is computed from circumstantial evidence of eyewitnesses as the flight was not well-documented at the time.)
- August: Karl Jatho flies up to 200 feet in a powered heavier-than-air craft
- December: After years of dedicated research and development, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright fly 300 yards in a more practical aeroplane. This is the first photographed powered heavier-than-air flight.
- March: Traian Vuia: first fully self-powered flight (Wright brothers needed headwinds or catapults).
- October: Alberto Santos-Dumont: first official flight.
- Paul Cornu: first helicopter flight (just a hop though)
- May: First ever passenger carrying flight - Wilbur Wright flew Charles W. Furnas for a distance of 2.5 miles in a Wright Model B.
- July: Louis Blériot flew the English Channel.
- August: The first international aviation meeting is held at Reims in France.
- October: Romanian inventor Henri Coanda (1886-1972), constructed the first jet engine in the world, named the Coanda-1910, exhibited at the International Aeronautical Show in Paris and tested near Paris.
- First coast-to-coast airplane flight across the USA by the Vin Fiz Flyer - taking 49 days, with several crashes en-route.
- July: First ever commercial cargo to be carried by an aircraft, a case of electric lamps, from Shoreham to Hove in England.
- October: First aircraft to be used in war was a Bleriot monoplane flown from Tripoli to Azizia to spy on Turkish positions.
- First all-metal aircraft flies, the Tubavion monoplane built by Ponche and Primard in France.
- September: First airman to be killed in miltary service - 2nd Lieutenant E. Hotchkiss of the Royal Flying Corps - due to structural failure of the aircraft, a Bristol monoplane.
- Planes at war: Manfred von Richthofen, called the "Red Baron" and "ace of aces", claims 80th victory, and finally is shot down
- May: A US Navy flying boat NC-4 flew by short stages from Long Island, New York to Lisbon, Portugal over 19 days.
- June: John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first non-stop Atlantic crossing, flying a Vickers Vimy from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours.
- November: Keith and Ross Smith fly another Vickers Vimy, G-EAOU, from England to Australia, the first flight between these two places.
- May: The first non-stop USA coast-to-coast flight.
- May 20-May 21: Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic nonstop and solo, direct from New York City to Paris.
- May: Charles Kingsford-Smith, Ulm, Lyon and Warner flew the Southern Cross, a modified Fokker Trimotor from San Francisco to Brisbane - the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air.
- June: First rocket-powered plane, the Ente.
- Focke Fa 61: first practical helicopter by Henrich Focke (Germany)
- Sir Frank Whittle builds the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft.
- Heinkel He 176 and He 178: first planes to be powered by liquid-fulled rocket and by turbojet respectively. Both private ventures by Ernst Heinkel and test-flown by Erich Warsitz. The rocket used was developed by Hellmuth Walter and the turbojet by Hans von Ohain.
- Messerschmitt Me 262: first jet fighter, test-piloted by Fritz Wendel. Mass production started in 1944, too late for a decisive impact.
- October: Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-1 past the speed of sound.
- July 14: Six de Havilland Vampire F3s of RAF No 54 Squadron, commanded by Wg Cdr D S Wilson-MacDonald, DSO, DFC, became the first jet aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. They went via Stornoway, Iceland and Labrador to Montreal on the first leg of a goodwill tour of Canada and the US where they gave several formation aerobatic displays.
- The British state airline BOAC introduced into service the first jet airliner the De Havilland Comet.
- First space flight by Yuri Gagarin, once around the planet within 108 minutes.
- Air speed record of 4,534 mph (Mach 6.1) is established by the North American X-15 research aircraft.
- Boeing 747 is unveiled. At the time the largest passenger carrying aircraft ever built and one which was to revolutionise commercial air travel.
- July: Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon.
- September: A SR-71 Blackbird crossed the Atlantic Ocean in less than two hours.
- British Airways starts the first supersonic airliner service with the introduction of the Concorde.
- August: Gossamer Condor became the first human-powered aeroplane, flying a figure-8 course to demonstrate sustained, controlled flight.
- December: First non-stop flight around the planet without refueling.
- October: First totally autonomous flight across the Atlantic by a computer-controlled model aircraft.
- December: First centenary of powered flight.
