Happy National Aviation Day! Steadfast readers of qAM will know that the off-script section is no stranger to airborne feats and flights of fancy. After all, the history of the United States is chock-full of historic moments in the art of flying, not least the creation of the first airplane. That ties directly to Aviation Day, too, as it’s set on the birthday of Orville Wright, one of the two brothers who created the flying machine.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the observation day in 1939, while Wright was still alive. Technically, the president has to declare the day every year for it to be in effect, but aviators and aviator-adjacent folks celebrate it annually anyway. Confusingly, the U.S. also has a federal observance day on Dec. 17, Pan American Aviation Day, to commemorate the Wright brothers’ first successful flight in Kitty Hawk, N.C.
