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19161776 Club

Boeing and Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products in a Seattle boat works

A broken Martin hydroaeroplane and months-long waits for parts pushed the timber heir and his Navy engineer friend to build planes themselves.

William Boeing bought his own airplane and quickly learned the trouble with owning one: when it broke, replacement parts could take months to arrive. That frustration, and a damaged Martin hydroaeroplane flown by test pilot Herb Munter, pushed Boeing and his friend George Conrad Westervelt, a Navy engineer, toward a different plan. On July 15, 1916, the two men incorporated Pacific Aero Products in an old boat works on the Duwamish River near Seattle. It would later be renamed Boeing…

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More from July 15
1870

Georgia is readmitted; the last Confederate state formally returns to the Union

Five years after Appomattox, Georgia completes the steep terms of Reconstruction, ratifying the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and seating Black legislators under the new rules.
1979

Carter tells the nation it suffers a 'crisis of confidence'; he never says the word malaise

With gas lines stretching for hours and inflation gnawing at paychecks, the President goes on live television to diagnose a mood, not announce a fix.
1862

CSS Arkansas steams alone through two Union fleets; Vicksburg's guns shelter her by nightfall

Lt. Brown's ironclad fights down the Yazoo, batters the Carondelet, Lancaster, and Pinola at close range, and reaches port with 30 casualties.
20091776 Club
STS-127 clears the pad at 6:03 p.m. carrying the final pieces of Japan's Kibō laboratory, the last major addition to the station's Japanese wing.
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More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1898

Roosevelt and the Buffalo Soldiers take Kettle Hill; San Juan Heights fall to the Fifth Corps

Outnumbered 16-to-1, Spanish defenders under Linares y Pombo inflict punishing losses before the heights are carried and the road to Santiago opens.
1890

Harrison signs Idaho into the union; the 43rd state misses the Fourth by one day

Delegate Dubois had asked the President to wait and sign on July 4th; Harrison declined, ending twenty-seven years of territorial status a day early.
1898

McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution; Hawaii is annexed, and its $4 million debt with it

The House voted 209 to 91 and the Senate 42 to 21, with a Pacific war making the islands' coaling station and anchorage look essential to Washington.
1890

Harrison signs Wyoming into the Union; women's suffrage comes with it

The 44th state enters with its suffrage provision intact, approved by voters 6,272 to 1,903 last November, a condition Congress had to accept whole or not at all.
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