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Events on September 28 in history

First aerial circumnavigation
1924Sep, 28

First round-the-world flight completed.

The first aerial circumnavigation of the world was completed in 1924 by four aviators from an eight-man team of the United States Army Air Service, the precursor of the United States Air Force. The 175-day journey covered over 26,345 miles (42,398 km). The team generally traveled east to west, around the northern-Pacific Rim, through to South Asia and Europe and back to the United States. Airmen Lowell H. Smith and Leslie P. Arnold, and Erik H. Nelson and John Harding Jr. made the trip in two single-engined open-cockpit Douglas World Cruisers (DWC) configured as floatplanes for most of the journey. Four more flyers in two additional DWC began the journey but their aircraft crashed or were forced down. All airmen survived.

In 1930, Australian Charles Kingsford Smith with a team of three others completed the first circumnavigation of the world by flight traversing both hemispheres, including the first trans-Pacific flight, from the US to Australia, in 1928. Kingsford Smith flew a Fokker F.VIIb/3m trimotor monoplane.

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Events on 1924

  • 12Feb

    Rhapsody in Blue

    George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music", in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.
  • 25Mar

    Second Hellenic Republic

    On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.
  • 8Apr

    Atatürk's Reforms

    Sharia courts are abolished in Turkey, as part of Atatürk's Reforms.
  • 4Aug

    Soviet Union

    Diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union are established.
  • 23Nov

    Andromeda Galaxy

    Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside of our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times.