Transportation

• Orville and Wilbur Wright begin the era of powered flight at Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
• American Aida d'Acosta becomes the first woman pilot when she flies a Santos-Dumont dirigible in Paris.
• Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen begins the first successful navigation of the Northwest Passage.
• Voters authorize the creation of the New York State Barge Canal.
• The first stage of New York City's subway system nears completion.
• The Williamsburg Bridge carries its first traffic between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
• The Buick Motor Co. is founded in Flint, Michigan.
• The Ford Motor Co. is incorporated in Detroit, Michigan.
• William S. Harley and Walter and Arthur Davidson build their first motorcycle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson of Burlington, Vermont, completes the first transcontinental automobile trip, from San Francisco to New York. The United States has about 8,000 cars but only about 150 miles of paved roads.
• New York City enacts the first automobile traffic code.
• Massachusetts and Missouri begin to issue driver's licenses.
• Mary Anderson invents the windshield wiper.

 

National Air and Space Museum