Ralph Johnstone
American aviator (1880–1910)
Ralph Greenley Johnstone (September 18, 1880 – November 17, 1910) was the first American person to die while piloting an airplane that crashed. He and Archibald Hoxsey were known as the "heavenly twins" for their attempts to break altitude records.
Biography
Johnstone was born on September 18, 1880, in Parsons, Kansas.
Johnstone started as a vaudeville trick bicycle rider who performed a midair forward somersault. He became a Wright exhibition team pilot. On August 17, 1910, he survived a crash at Asbury Park, New Jersey.
On October 27, 1910, the International Aviation Tournament was held at the Belmont Park racetrack in Elmont, New York. The meet offered $3,750 for the highest altitude, another $1,000 for a world record and a $5,000 bonus for exceeding 10,000 feet (3,048 metres). Johnstone set a new American flight altitude record of 8,471 feet (2,582 metres). During the flight, a gust of wind forced him to fly backwards, and he landed near Artist Lake in Middle Island, New York.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ralph Johnstone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.