12 June 1930: Ruth Rowland Nichols is issued a pilot’s license by the National Aeronautic Association. Ms. Nichols, a contemporary of Amelia Earhart, Louise Thaden, and Jackie Cochran, would set several world aviation records.
© 2022, Bryan R. Swopes
12 June 1918: 2nd Lieutenant James Harold Doolittle, Aviation Section, Signal Officers’ Reserve Corps, was granted Aero Club of America pilot certificate No. 1702 on behalf of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
The license was signed by Alan Ramsay Hawley, President, and William Hawley, Secretary.
© 2017, Bryan R. Swopes
8 June 1911: The Aero Club of America, as representative of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, issued Aviator Certificate Number 1 to Glenn Hammond Curtiss. The document was signed by Allan A. Ryan, president of the club, and G. F. Campbell-Wood, secretary.
© 2021, Bryan R. Swopes
6 April 1927: William Patterson MacCracken, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, became the first person to be issued a pilot’s license by the government of the United States. License Number 1 was a private license, signed by then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who would later become the 31st President of the United States of America.
Assistant Secretary MacCracken had offered the first pilot certificate to aviation pioneer Orville Wright, but Wright declined, as “he no longer flew and did not think he needed a Federal license to show that he had been the first man to fly.”
© 2018, Bryan R. Swopes
8 March 1910: John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon (later, the 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara, G.B.E., M.C., P.C.) was the first airplane pilot to be issued an aviator’s certificate by the Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom. He had previously been assigned certificate number 40 of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. He was issued Certificate Number 1 in England.
© 2019, Bryan R. Swopes