In many ways, critical developments in aviation had their roots in Virginia, said David Hahn, senior assistant director of the Virginia Aviation Museum.

Virginia has been the home of aviation pioneers and the site of pioneering accomplishments in military and civilian flight.

*1801: On the third try, three students at the College of William and Mary launched an unmanned hot-air balloon from the courthouse green in Williamsburg. The flight was the first recorded aeronautical event in Virginia history.

*1831: The Wright brothers' mother, Susan Catherine Koerner, was born in Hillsboro in Loudoun County.

*1861: Union and Confederate armies used balloons in Virginia as surveillance platforms to gather intelligence on opposing forces.

*1902: The Army organized a balloon detachment at Fort Myer in Arlington.

*1908: The Wright brothers demonstrated their aircraft to the U.S. Army at Fort Myer. On Sept. 17, with Orville flying, the plane crashed, injuring Wright and killing his passenger, Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge, who thus became the world's first airplane fatality. The Wrights nonetheless sold their airplane to the Army, and Signal Corps Airplane No. 1 was the first military airplane in the world.

*1910: Aviator Eugene Ely made the first airplane takeoff from a ship, flying off an 83-foot-long wooden ramp built over the bow of the Navy cruiser USS Birmingham anchored in Hampton Roads.

*1915: Pioneer American aviator Glenn Curtiss started the Curtiss Flying School's Atlantic Coast Aeronautical Station in Newport News. It was the first regularly used airport in Virginia.

*1917: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which later became NASA, selected a site along the Back River in Hampton for research and experimentation. Langley Field, named for aeronautical researcher Samuel Pierpont Langley, also became an Army aviation base.

*1926: Virginia-born Navy Cmdr. Richard Evelyn Byrd made the first flight across the North Pole with Floyd Bennett.

*1927: Richmond dedicated the Richard Evelyn Byrd Flying Field, now Richmond International Airport.

*1941: American Airlines made the first official landing at Washington National Airport, now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, located in Arlington.

*1949: Allegheny Airlines, which grew to become US Airways, moved its headquarters to Virginia.

*1957: Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach was designated a master jet base for the Navy.

*1962: Washington Dulles International Airport opened in Northern Virginia.

*1965: Apollo astronauts practiced piloting problems they would encounter in the last 150 feet of descent to the moon using Langley's Lunar Landing Research Facility.

*1998: The Navy announced it would base most of its East Coast F/A-18 Hornet jet attack squadrons at Oceana Naval Air Station.

Peter Bacqué is the Richmond Times-Dispatch's aviation writer.