It is no other than the USS Enterprise CVN-65!

USS Enterprise (CVN-65) has a width of 257 feet with 1,123 feet in aircraft carrying length!

Launched on September 24 1960, the CVN-65 was also the world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier and the eighth U.S. Naval vessel to bear the name. USS Enterprise is still in active service.

Also called Big E, Mobile Chernobyl, Three-Quarter Mile Island, The Enterprison, The Pig, the USS Enterprise has a maximum speed of 30+ knots.

The USS Enterprise CVN-65’s Motto? Ready on Arrival; The First, the Finest; Eight Reactors, None Faster

On December 4, 1958, Bob Timm and John Cook took off from Las Vegas, Nevada in a Cessna 172. They stayed in the air for 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and 5 seconds, finally landing on February 7, 1959.

During the trip, the plane was constantly refueled in flight and swooped down so that Timm and Cook could grab water and food from a chase car that followed them. In the time that they were airborne, the duo covered a distance that was equivalent to flying six times around the Earth.

A 747 headed for Miami crashed near the Colombian capital on July 7, 2008, killing two people on the ground.  Though none of the plane’s crew was reported killed, it was reported that a hospital director was in serious condition.

The accident was the second time in about six weeks that a Boeing 747, flown by Kalitta Air of Ypsilanti, Michigan, has crashed.  According to Donald Tascon, deputy director of Colombia’s civil aviation agency, the plane’s crew told air traffic controllers that one of the engines was on fire and seconds after, radio contact was lost.  The cause was under investigation. 

Madrid village Mayor Diego Humberto Sicard said the plane hit a ranch roughly 15 miles northwest of Bogota at 3:50 a.m.  The victims who died, Pedro and Edwin Suarez, lived in a small house on a ranch, said the mayor.

Kalitta Air Vice President Pete Sanderlin told the Associated Press that the plane, with its eight crewmembers aboard, had stopped in Bogota to pick up flowers and was scheduled to land in Miami at about 8:00 a.m.  Sandelin stated:

“We think all of the crew on board had various injuries, from slight to more serious injuries.  “We don’t know the extent of it yet.”

Two crew members were treated at a local hospital, while six others were sent to the Central Police Hospital in Bogota.  The director there, Col. Nader Lujan, told RCN radio that one, identified as Josephy Kendall, was in serious condition.     

 In Hammondsport, New York, 2,000 people witnessed a triumph off the ground from Stony Brook Farm when a wood-and-fabric lifted off the field on 4 July 1908.

It was the first pre-announced public flight in America, the first flight of a flying machine outside Europe to mark history. Glenn H. Curtiss flew and was stable for a kilometer or more and gained him a national hero status, to the dismay of Orville and Wilbur Wright.

The June Bug, which was supposed to rise only a few dozen feet, shot more than 200 feet above the crowd on the first attempt but the tail section had been wrongly angled. On the second attempt, the plane with its crackling, smoky engine bobbed unevenly. It flew for 5,090 feet in 1 minute 42.5 seconds before touching down village grounds.

Ever since the success of the June Big, the Wright Brothers saw Curtiss as a rival in the aviation world and in business. Curtiss developed the first practical seaplane in 1911 and the flying boat in 1912, earning renown as “the Father of Naval Aviation.” From 1916 to 1918, he turned Buffalo into the airplane manufacturing hub of America.