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From today's featured article

Glider flight by Laurence J. Lesh at Morris Park

The Morris Park Aerodrome was a short-lived airfield in what is now the Morris Park section of the Bronx, New York City. In operation from 1908 to 1909, it was the first flying field in the nation, occupying the grounds of the defunct Morris Park Racecourse. The Aeronautical Society of New York leased the land in 1908, using it for building and testing aircraft, and for putting on public exhibitions including major events in November 1908 and June 1909. The first event, captured in an oil painting by Rudolph Dirks titled The Fledglings, included several glider flights by sixteen-year-old Laurence Lesh (pictured), culminating in a crash in which he was severely injured. The second event had flights by Glenn Curtiss in Golden Flyer, his motorized biplane, including the first demonstration of a stable flight around a closed course using ailerons for lateral control. When the aerodrome closed for residential development, the Society moved its operations to Roosevelt Field on Long Island. (Full article...)

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On this day

June 28: Vidovdan in Serbia

Carlotta Grisi as Giselle in 1841

1841 – Giselle (title role pictured), a ballet by the French composer Adolphe Adam, was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.
1904 – In the worst maritime disaster involving a Danish merchant ship, SS Norge ran aground on Hasselwood Rock and sank in the North Atlantic, resulting in more than 635 deaths.
1956 – Polish workers demanding better working conditions began massive protests in Poznań, but were later violently repressed by the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps.
1963 – Profumo affair: During the trial of Stephen Ward, Mandy Rice-Davies uttered the phrase "Well he would, wouldn't he?"
2016 – Gunmen attacked Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, killing 45 people and injuring more than 230 others.

James Madison (d. 1836)
Charles Cruft (b. 1852)
Muhammad Yunus (b. 1940)
Karina Gould (b. 1987)

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Today's featured picture

Genevieve Clark Thomson (1894–1981) was an American suffragist, journalist and political candidate. The daughter of Champ Clark, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, she was educated in Washington, DC, and worked as a reporter from 1913. In 1915 she married publisher James M. Thomson, whom she had met while campaigning for her father's presidential nomination. A supporter of temperance and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Thomson was active in the women's suffrage movement. In 1924 she ran unsuccessfully for Louisiana's 2nd congressional district seat in Congress, losing to J. Zach Spearing. This photograph shows Thomson using a candlestick telephone in around 1910–1915.

Photograph credit: unknown photographer for Bain News Service; restored by Adam Cuerden

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