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One-hour helicopter flight

Aviation designer Igor Ivor Sikorsky flew his experimental helicopter, the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, for 65 minutes and 14.5 seconds. It was the first successful single lifting rotor helicopter in the United States. VS-300 was also first successful helicopter with single vertical-plane tail rotor configuration for antitorque.

Insulin becomes generally available

American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly started to sell insulin for treatment of diabetes. The disease was known to medicine from antiquity. Insulin was discovered by Charles Best and Frederick Banting in 1922. It's still used as a medication for high blood sugar today. Typically it is given by injection under the skin.

French sociologist Émile Durkheim is born

Durkheim is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science. He didn't engage in direct fieldwork but gathered information from anthropologists and explorers. His book Le Suicide is regarded as the first to make a methodological case study of an aspect of society, and shaped sociological thought as we know it today.

Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci is born

Da Vinci was a scientist and engineer, but also painter, sculptor, architect. His most known inventions are a parachute, helicopter, and tank. He was interested in music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. Leonardo is often mentioned as an exemplar of the Universal Genius or Renaissance Man.

Anniversaries of the (in)famous