The first official flight with air mail in 1911

 

On 18 February 1911, The first official flight with air mail took place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivered 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 km away.

Although airborne mail transport had occurred during the nineteenth century, the first official airmail flown by airplane took place in India in 1911.

During the 1800s, balloons and gliders carried the first flown mail. The first official U.S. airmail delivery took place on 17 August 1859. On that day, veteran balloonist John Wise (1808-1879) carried 123 letters and twenty-three circulars from Lafayette to Crawfordsville, Indiana, a distance of thirty miles, in his balloon Jupiter.

On 17 December 1903, Orville (1871-1948) and Wilbur (1867-1912) Wright made the first sustained, powered airplane flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. Orville flew 120 feet for twelve seconds. No mail was carried. During the following decade, pilots around the world barnstormed the countryside, holding aerial demonstration meets, creating postcards and souvenir labels. Many pioneer pilots carried unofficial mail on their short flights. “Unofficial mail” refers to mail carried privately and postmarked before or after the flight, while the post office authorized and serviced “official mail.”

 On 18 February 1911, French pilot Henri Pequet (1888-1974) carried the first official mail flown by airplane. The flight occurred in India. Pequet carried a sack with about 6,000 cards and letters on his Humber biplane. The plane flew a distance of five miles, from an Allahabad polo field, over the Yamuna River, to Naini. All mail received a special cancel depicting an airplane, mountains, and “First Aerial Post, 1911, U. P. Exhibition Allahabad.”

Pequet was in India flying demonstration flights for the United Provinces Exhibition in Allahabad. Walter Windham (1868-1942), a British aviation pioneer, organized the aerial demonstrations. The event marked the first time airplanes flew in India. An appeal from Rev. W.E.S. Holland, a chaplain of the Holy Trinity Church, Allahabad, spurred the event. He had appealed to Windham for help in fundraising for a new youth hostel. Windham conceived the aerial post and obtained approval from the post office for officially sanctioned mail. Postal officials asked Windham to design the cancel. Most mail has a magenta cancellation, but a few examples exist with black ink. The regular postage rate required an additional surcharge as a donation for the Church Hostel Building.

To tell the story of airmail’s development and expansion, aerophilatelists avidly collect worldwide airmail stamps and mail flown by a variety of aircraft. Airmail redefined global postal communications in the twentieth century.

 

Enzo Ferrari Birth Anniversary

 

Enzo Ferrari, born on 18 February 1898, was an Italian motor racing driver and entrepreneur, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari automobile marque. He was widely known as "il Commendatore" or "il Drake".

Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Birth Anniversary

 

Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, born on 18 February 1894, was a politician, an Indian independence activist and a socialist, also described as an Islamic socialist. Kidwai was a major ally of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. After India gained independence from the British Raj in 1947, Kidwai became India's first Minister for Communications.

Malayapuram Singaravelu Birth Anniversary

 

Malayapuram Singaravelu, born on 18 February 1860, was a pioneer in more than one field in India. In 1918, he founded the first trade union in India. On 1 May 1923 he organised the first ever celebration of May Day in the country.

Ramakrishna Paramahansa Birth Anniversary

 

Ramakrishna Paramahansa, born on 18 February 1836, was an Indian Hindu mystic, saint and considered as an avatar by many in 19th century Bengal. Sri Ramakrishna experienced spiritual ecstasies from a young age, and was influenced by several religious traditions, including devotion toward the Goddess Kali, Tantra (shakta), Vaishnava (bhakti), and Advaita Vedanta. As a priest at the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple, his mystical temperament and ecstasies gradually gained him widespread acknowledgement, attracting to him various spiritual teachers, social leaders, lay followers and eventually disciples. Reverence and admiration for him among Bengali elites led to his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda founding the Ramakrishna Math, which provides spiritual training for monastics and householder devotees and the Ramakrishna Mission to provide charity, social work and education.

Venkataramana Bhagavathar Birth Anniversary

 

Venkataramana Bhagavathar, born on 18 February 1781, was a direct disciple of Saint Thyagaraja and a composer of Carnatic music. Bhagavathar composed his songs in Saurashtra language and has left behind a number of kritis.

Michelangelo Death Anniversary

 

Michelangelo, who passed away on 18 February 1564, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered by many the greatest artist of his lifetime, and by some the greatest artist of all time, his artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival, the fellow Florentine and client of the Medici, Leonardo da Vinci.

Jībanānanda Dāś Birth Anniversary

 

Jībanānanda Dāś, born on 18 February 1899, was an Indian poet, writer, novelist and essayist in the Bengali language. Popularly called "Rupashi Banglar Kabi'' (Poet of Beautiful Bengal), Das is probably the most read poet after Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam in Bangladesh and West Bengal. While not particularly recognised initially, today Das is acknowledged as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language.

Jai Narayan Vyas Birth Anniversary

 

Jai Narayan Vyas, born on 18 February 1899, was an Indian politician and the third chief minister of the State of Rajasthan and was a leader of Indian National Congress party.

J. Robert Oppenheimer Death Anniversary

 

J. Robert Oppenheimer, who passed away on 18 February 1967, was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often credited as the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project—the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was among those who observed the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. He later remarked that the explosion brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Birth Anniversary

 

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, born on 18 February 1946, was the supreme personality of Godhead and the chief proponent of the Achintya Bheda Abheda Vedanta school and the Gaudiya Vaishnavism tradition within Hinduism.

Alessandro Volta Birth Anniversary

 

Alessandro Volta, born on 18 February 1745, was an Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power, who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.

World Whale Day

World Whale Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of February, and as such, this year on February 18. The objective of this day is to increase public knowledge of these amazing creatures, their beauty, and the ecological importance of what they contribute to the earth.

The aquatic mammals belong to the order Cetacea. The term 'whale' can be used in reference to ant cetacean, including porpoises and dolphins, but in general it is applied to those more than 3 metres (10 feet) long.

World Whale Day was founded in Maui, Hawaii, in 1980 to honour humpback whales, which swim off the coast of this tropical island. This day was started aa an idea by Greg Kauffman, founder of the Pacific Whale Foundation to raise awareness about the threat of extinction faced by humpback whales.