First Fatality

September 17, 1908 - The first fatality in an airplane crash happened on this day.

26-year-old Thomas Selfridge was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army who had graduated in the same West Point class as Douglas MacArthur. In 1907 he became the first man to fly in a heavier-than-air craft in Canada. This was a passenger aboard a giant winged kite called the Cygnet (designed by Alexander Graham Bell) which crashed into a lake.

When the Army was interested in buying a plane from the Wright Brothers, they sent Selfridge to observe a demonstration of the aircraft at Fort Myer, Virginia. He eagerly volunteered as a passenger aboard the plane flown by Orville Wright, but a broken propellor sent the plane into a nosedive from 150 feet.

Orville Wright described the incident in a letter to his brother, Wilbur:

Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started straight for the ground. Our course for 50 feet (15 m) was within a very few degrees of the perpendicular. Lt. Selfridge up to this time had not uttered a word, though he took a hasty glance behind when the propeller broke and turned once or twice to look into my face, evidently to see what I thought of the situation. But when the machine turned head first for the ground, he exclaimed "Oh! Oh!" in an almost inaudible voice.

Selfridge suffered a skull fracture and never regained consciousness. He died later that night.  Orville was also severely injured with a broken thigh and he remained hospitalized for seven weeks.

Selfridge is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.