July 13

On the 13th in 1919, the British rigid airship R34 arrived at its base in East Fortune, England. On the trip the R34, the crew had accomplished a couple of firsts. When it had arrived in Mineola, New York on July 6, the landing crew at Mineola, which had zero experience handling large, rigid airships, compelled the R34’s captain, Major Pritchard, to parachute to the ground, thus making him the first person to reach America by air. When the party completed the return trip, begun at Mineola, a small town on New York’s Long Island (a rather unimaginative name because it's an island and it's really kind of long) and which took 75 hours, the R34 had completed the first West to East crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an aircraft.