October 14:

1947 : Yeager breaks sound barrier

U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly
faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter
during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13
German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped
capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war,
he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental
X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the
possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster
than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would
tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when
Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The
X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and
then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and
exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The
rocket plane, nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis," was designed with thin,
unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber
bullet.

Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager's achievement
was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test
pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket
plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of
brigadier general.

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1066 : The Battle of Hastings
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1912 : Theodore Roosevelt shot in Milwaukee
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1964 : King wins Nobel Peace Prize
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