From the completion of the Panama Canal to the advent of space travel, October has been a fruitful month in the history of human movement and events that, in some cases, still resonate in travel today. Check out the 10th month in travel history…

In 1260, under Pope Alexander IV, Chartres Cathedral in France was consecrated. Completed in less than 30 years, the structure represents high Gothic architecture at its purest and is visited by 1.5 million people annually.

In 1873, an international railway bridge was completed across the Niagara River at Buffalo.

In 1903, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway received a charter to build a line between Quebec and Winnipeg.

In 1913, the first commercial inter-city flight in Canada was made by W. Robinson from Montreal to Ottawa.

In 1913, the Panama Canal was effectively completed as US President Woodrow Wilson sent a signal from the White House by telegraph, setting off explosives that destroyed a section of the Gamboa dike.

In 1938, Trans-Canada Airlines, created by an act of Parliament the year before, was ready to start carrying mail and freight between Montreal and Vancouver.

In 1958, Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 jetliner from New York to Paris in eight hours and 41 minutes. At the same time, the first London-New York flight was inaugurated by British Overseas Airways.

In 1959, the Guggenheim Museum, designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, opened to the public in New York.

In 1961, Parks Canada began reconstruction of Louisbourg based on the colony’s well-preserved historical records and archeological investigation. It is now a major visitor attraction.

In 1967, Sheila Scott, a 39-year-old British pilot, set out from Shannon, Ireland, and crossed the Atlantic in 17 hours and 14 minutes. At the time, it was a record for an east-to-west crossing in a single-engine plane.

In 1967, Expo 67, which opened in Montreal on April 27, closed with a final attendance total of more than 50 million.

In 1968, Apollo 7 was launched by the US. The first manned Apollo mission was also the first in which live television broadcasts were received from orbit.

In 1971, Britain’s historic London Bridge was transported across the Atlantic and opened as a tourist attraction in Arizona.

In 1972, a charter plane carrying 45 people – members of an amateur Uruguayan rugby team, plus friends and relatives – crashed in the Andes Mountains. Ten weeks later, two of the 18 survivors reached civilization and the others were rescued shortly after. The story became the subject of the Piers Paul Read book, “Alive,” and at least two movies.

In 1972, Palestinian guerrillas hijacked a German airliner and gained the release of three people seized in the massacre at the Munich Olympics.

In 1974, the worst aviation accident in the history of Northern Canada occurred when 32 men died in the crash of an oil company aircraft off Rae Point, N.W.T. The Panarctic Oils Ltd. Lockheed Electra crashed into the ice off Melville Island as it attempted to land.

In 1977, Queen Elizabeth began a Silver Jubilee visit to Canada during which she opened a session of Parliament.

In 1977, West German commandos stormed a hijacked Lufthansa airliner at an airport in Somalia and freed all 86 hostages aboard.

In 1977, the Concorde made its first landing in New York after 19 months of delays caused by residents concerned about the supersonic aircraft’s noise.

In 1977, a 747 jumbo jet with 150 passengers aboard completed an around-the-world flight in a record time of 54 hours, seven minutes.

In 1989, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake shook San Francisco. Sixty-two people died in the quake, which damaged a portion of the Nimitz Freeway, causing part of the roadway to collapse on to a lower deck. Among the thousands of buildings damaged was Candlestick Park, which was full of baseball fans awaiting Game 3 of the World Series between San Francisco and Oakland.

In 1984, the “Challenger” and its seven-member crew glided to a perfect landing at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The landing capped two historic firsts during its eight-day mission: Marc Garneau became the first Canadian to fly in space and Kathy Sullivan became the first woman to walk in space.

In 1986, Expo 86 closed in Vancouver after a 172-day run. It drew 22 million people.

In 1997, a jet-propelled car broke the sound barrier on land in Nevada.

In 1998, hurricane Mitch cut through the western Caribbean, pummelling coastal Honduras and Belize; the storm caused several thousand deaths in Central America in the days that followed.

In 1999, an EgyptAir jetliner bound for Cairo crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket Island, Mass., 33 minutes after taking off from New York’s JFK Airport, killing all 217 on board, including
21 Canadians.

In 2003, three Concordes swooped into London’s Heathrow Airport, joining in a spectacular finale to the era of luxury supersonic jet travel.

In 2004, the last passenger flight took off from Mirabel International Airport just outside Montreal as it shut down after 30 years. Millions of passengers had been expected to pass through Mirabel’s modern terminal after it opened in 1975, but it didn’t live up to its promise. The airport authority was looking for developers to offer ideas for the facility.

In 2010, Virgin Galactic’s space tourism rocket SpaceShipTwo achieved its first solo glide flight, marking another step in the company’s eventual plans to fly paying passengers. It flew freely for 11 minutes in the Mojave Desert before landing at an airport runway.

In 2011, Boeing’s new 787, the much-anticipated $190-million long-haul jet nicknamed The Dreamliner, carried its first passengers on a four- hour flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong.

In 2011, Ottawa announced that Sable Island, a 40-km long crescent-shaped island in the North Atlantic about 300 km southeast of Nova Scotia, was designated a national park. (It became a National Park Reserve in 2013.)

In 2012, superstorm Sandy, the downgraded hurricane that morphed with two wintry systems, made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J. The

1,600 km-wide hybrid of rain and high wind caused major flooding and killed more than 100 people in 10 states. It swamped lower Manhattan with a 13-foot surge of seawater, devastated New Jersey coastal communities and left over 8.5 million people without power. Airports in the path of the storm were closed, grounding over 18,000 flights worldwide.

In 2014, the Virgin Galactic space tourism rocket, known as SpaceShipTwo, exploded after taking off on a test flight in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, killing the pilot and seriously injuring the co-pilot.

In 2015, Patricia, which peaked as the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere, made landfall on a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 266 km/h, avoiding direct hits on the resort city of Puerto Vallarta and major port city of Manzanillo.

In 2017, European aircraft giant Airbus Group announced it was acquiring a 50.01 percent stake in Montreal-based Bombardier’s C Series program for no financial payment, weeks after the US issued 300 percent preliminary duties on exports of the aircraft following Boeing’s trade complaint.

In 2018, A new-generation Boeing jet operated by Indonesian budget airline Lion Air crashed minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. The head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee later said the jet was found to have a malfunctioning air speed indicator for its last four flights.

(Have an event, milestone or memory you’d considered for publication? Send your November contributions to baginski@travelindustrytoday.com)