First Space Shuttle flight
1981 · Event
Columbia lifts off twenty years to the day after Gagarin — the first reusable orbital spaceplane, flown by humans on its very first launch.
On these timelines: Spaceflight, Master, USA, Science & Technology
More from Spaceflight
- Apollo 8 orbits the Moon (1968)
- Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket (1926)
- Apollo 17: the last Moon landing (1972)
- V-2: the first successful A-4 launch (1942)
- Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation (1903)
- Shenzhou 5: China's first astronaut (2003)
- Mir space station (1986)
- First spacewalk (1965)
Around 1981
- Chernobyl disaster (1986)
- Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)
- Iranian Revolution (1978)
- Gulf War (1990)
- Watergate scandal (1972)
- Yom Kippur War (1973)
- Invention of the World Wide Web (1989)
- Yugoslav Wars (1991)
- Birth of hip-hop (1973)
- Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)