1902 – Charles Augustus Lindbergh, American pilot, was born (d. 1974). Charles Augustus Lindbergh, also known as “Lucky Lindy” and “The Lone Eagle, ” was an American pilot famous for the first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic, from Roosevelt Field, Long Island to Paris 1927 in the “Spirit of St. Louis. ”

1911 – Burgess and Curtiss becomes the US’s first licensed aircraft manufacturer, receiving a license to build Wright aircraft from the Wright Brothers, who held several key aeronautical patents.

1921 – The first coast to coast airmail flight was flown by Jack Knight in a De Havilland DH-4. The flight from San Francisco to Roosevelt Field, New York took 33 hours and 20 min.

1929 – The aviation and space operations of Boeing and Pratt & Whitney were merged to form the United Aircraft & Transport Corp.

1934 – First scheduled trans-Atlantic airmail.   Lufthansa begins the first regular airmail service across the Atlantic Ocean, between Berlin and Rio de Janeiro.

1935 – The US Navy‘s last rigid airship, the USS Macon, loses its upper fin off Point Sur, California, sinks to the surface of the Pacific Ocean in a controlled crash, and is lost, although the inclusion of lifevests on board allows the saving of 81 of 83 crew. It takes with it the four Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawks, BuNos. A-9058/9061 carried aboard for fleet scouting. The airship’s remains lie unfound until 1990 when a fisherman brings up a girder. Wreck is subsequently found by manned Navy submersible Sea Cliff.

1942 – The U. S. Navy aircraft carriers USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Yorktown (CV-5) launch air strikes against Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands. It is the first offensive operation by American forces in World War II.

1946 – Pan American inaugurates the first commercial use of Lockheed Model 049 Constellation with the aircraft’s first scheduled service between New York and Bermuda.

1964 – The Federal Aviation Agency launches Operation Bongo Mark 2 to investigate the effects of supersonic flight; over the coming months, a Convair B-58 will fly through the sound barrier at low altitude over Oklahoma City

1969 – First flight of the Boeing 747 “Jumbo Jet” airliner takes place in Seattle, Washington. The wide-bodied, long-range transport is capable of carrying 347 passengers, and is the largest aircraft in commercial airline service in the world.

1971 – Apollo 14 Mission – Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell aboard LM, Antares land on the Moon at Fra Mauro formation.

1982 – The Mil Mi-26 helicopter lifts a load weighing 57 metric tons to 2,000 m (6,500 ft) to break a world record for a helicopter.

1983 – Boeing announces it will stop producing Boeing 727 airliners.

1986 – Launch: Mir, Soviet (later Russian) space station, first modular space station.

1995 – The CIA’s Corona reconnaissance satellite program, run in secret with help from the US Air Force from 1959 through 1972, is declassified. Corona satellites were launched aboard rockets, took photos of the Soviet Union and China, then parachuted back into the atmosphere where they would be retrieved in the air by specially equipped US Air Force C-119 Flying Boxcar transport planes

2002 – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) takes over responsibilities for airport security from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia, OV-102, is lost as it reenters after a two-week mission, STS-107. Damage to the shuttle’s thermal protection system (TPS) leads to structural failure in the shuttle’s left wing and, ultimately, the spacecraft breaking apart as it decelerated over Texas. Investigations after the tragedy reveal the damage to the reinforced carbon-carbon leading edge wing panel had resulted from a piece of insulation foam breaking away from the external tank during the launch and hitting shuttle’s wing. Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon were killed. See Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

The above is a partial list of aviation events that took place in the month of January.  A more complete listing can be found here.