* NASA selected first group of women astronauts (1978).

* N.Y. Times ridiculed the idea of reaching the Moon by rocket.

* Sikorsky XR-4, single-rotary wing, two-man helicopter, made its first successful flight (1942).

* First successful automatic homing flight of Navy Lark (XSAM-N-4) launched at NAMTC, making simulated interception at a range of 17,300 yards at an altitude of 7,400 feet (1950).

* USAF Northrop Snark launched from Cape Canaveral on 2,000-mile flight (1956).

* Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy testified before the House Armed Services Committee: "Such long-range programs as the antimissile missile and the military satellite programs are in the research and exploratory development stages. They are important and must be pursued, but they must not distract us from the speedy development of our other missile systems. To handle them, I am establishing within the Department of Defense an Advanced Research Projects Agency, which will be responsible to the Secretary of Defense for the unified direction and management of the antimissile missile program and for outer space projects (1958)."

* In his budget message to Congress, President Eisenhower stated: "Funds are provided for an expanded research and development effort on military satellites and other outer space vehicles and on antimissile-missile systems, to be carried out directly under the Secretary of Defense." The budget for fiscal year 1959 showed that $340 million in new obligational authority was being asked for the Advanced Research Projects Agency. No new authorizations were sought for the International Geophysical Year, but estimated obligations for earth satellite exploration of the upper atmosphere under this program were $8,139,834 for fiscal year 1958 and $21 million for fiscal year 1959 (1958).

* Convair B-58 Hustler, jet bomber powered by four GE J-79 engines, broke six world speed records, Maj. H. J. Deutschendorf, U.S. Air Force, as pilot. On first closed-course run, the Hustler averaged 1,200.194 miles per hour, and it averaged 1,061.808 miles per hour on both runs carrying a payload of 4,408 pounds and a crew of three (1961).

* NASA announced that a Life Sciences Research Laboratory would be established on February 1 at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.(1961).

* First docking of two manned spacecraft, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 (U.S.S.R., 1969).

* NACA issued a staff study entitled "A National Research Program for Space Technology (1958)."

* Senator Lyndon B. Johnson in a CBS radio address urged the United States "to demonstrate its initiative before the United Nations by inviting all member nations to join in this adventure into outer space together (1958)."

*Joint Airship Board Army/Navy founded (1917).

* First transcontinental telephone conversation, New York to San Francisco, by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson (1915).

* Gen. H. S. Vandenberg, Vice Chief of Staff, USAF, approved policy calling for development of earth satellite components and the initiation of satellite development at the proper time (1948).

* 4751st Air Defense Missile Wing to develop and conduct training program for Bomarc units, and the 864th Strategic Missile Squadron to be equipped with Jupiter IRBM, were both activated (1958).

* First successful castings of molybdenum made at U.S. Bureau of Mines Laboratory at Albany, Oreg.(1959).

* NASA began negotiations with French Commission for Spatial and Scientific Research for conducting a cooperative Franco-American space program (1961).

+NOTE: This Is a Full Earth Day.

* First aviation meet in U.S.A. held in Los Angeles (1910).

* Only date in U.S. since 1950 with no tornados.

* Asteroid number 500, Selinur, discovered (1903).

* New official American one-man duration record of 8 hours 53 minutes set by Lt. B. Q. Jones in a Martin tractor biplane at San Diego, Calif. (1915).

* President Coolidge canceled all preparations for Navy Arctic expedition in which it was intended to use airplanes and the dirigible Shenandoah (1924).

* Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics formally established (1926).

* Spanish rebel planes began daily bombing of Barcelona from Majorca (1938).

* Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews, Chief of Army General Headquarters Air Force, in an address to the annual convention of the National Aeronautic Association at St. Louis, said that the United States was a fifth- or sixth-rate air power (1939).

* U.S. upper atmosphere research program initiated with captured German V-2 rockets. A V-2 panel of representatives of various interested agencies was created, and a total of more than 60 V-2's were fired before the supply ran out. The Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University then undertook to develop a medium-altitude rocket, the Aerobee, while the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) directed its efforts to the development of a large high-altitude rocket, first called the Neptune, later the Viking (1946).

* Air Force established Project MX-1593 (Project Atlas), study phase for an intercontinental missile. Contract given Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft on January 23. This was the follow-on to Project MX-774 terminated in 1947 (1951).

* USAF scientific advisory panel concluded that unidentified flying objects (UFO's): (1) held no direct physical threat; (2) were not foreign developments; (3) were not unknown phenomena requiring revision of current scientific concepts; and (4) a rash of sightings offered a threat from skillful hostile propagandists (1953).

* The NACA adopted resolution recommending that national space program can be most effectively implemented by the cooperative effort of the Department of Defense, the NACA, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Science Foundation, together with universities, research institutions, and industrial companies of the Nation, with military development and operation of space vehicles a responsibility of the Department of Defense, and research and scientific space operations the responsibility of the NACA 91958).

* Special Subcommittee on Outer Space Propulsion created by the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, Senator Clinton P. Anderson as chairman (1958).

Secretary of State Dulles proposed the formation of an international commission to insure the use of outer space exclusively for peaceful purposes (1958).

* FCC first allocated radio frequencies to private industry (ITT) for experiments in bouncing signals off the Moon and artificial satellites (1961).

* In the message of President Eisenhower accompanying his budget for fiscal year 1962, it was said: "In the program of manned space flight, the reliability of complex booster capsule escape and life support components of the Mercury system is now being tested to assure a safe manned ballistic flight into space, and hopefully a manned orbital flight in calendar year 1961. Further test and experimentation will be necessary to establish if there are any valid scientific reasons for extending manned space flight beyond the Mercury program (1961)."

* Final assembly of first Saturn flight vehicle (SA-1) was completed (1961).

* First precise observation of the position of Mars (272 B.C.).

* Benjamin Franklin born (1706).

* First time a ship crossed the Antarctic Circle (1773).

* First launching of a test model towed by a rocket vehicle with a flexible towline, by Langley Laboratory's PARD at Wallops Island, Va. (1955).

* First launch of Navy Polaris test vehicle at Cape Canaveral (1958).

* First invention award under the authority of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 given to Dr. Frank T. McClure of the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins for his satellite Doppler navigation system, the $3,000 award being presented by NASA Administrator Glennan at NASA headquarters (1961).

* Anarctica discovered (1840).

* First demonstration of an x-ray machine in the U.S. (1896).

* James Watt born (1736).

* Henry Bessemer, inventor of steel process, born (1813).

* First German aerial bombing of Britain, by two Zeppelins, thereby opening up a new era in the exploitation of aeronautics. During World War I, a total of 56 tons of aerial bombs was dropped on London and 214 tons on the rest of Britain (1915).

* U.S. School of Aviation Medicine began operations under Maj. Williams H. Wilmer, Signal Corps, Hazelhurst Field, Mineola, N.Y. A low-pressure tank was constructed to simulate altitudes up to 30,000 feet, and some studies were conducted at Pikes Peak (1918).

* First glide flight of AAF-NACA XS-1 rocket research airplane (No.1 of the original three X-1's built), by Jack Woolams, Bell Aircraft test pilot, at Pinecastle Army Air Base, Fla. (1946).

* The AEC demonstrated a 5-watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator (designated SNAP 3) to President Eisenhower as an example of the potential use of radioisotopes and static thermoelectric conversion for providing long-lived electric power for space (1959).

* Report of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences stated that life in some form on other planets of the solar system may possibly exist, but that evidence of this is not available today (1961).

* Iris rocket, new solid-propellent single-stage sounding rocket, failed to attin programmed flight from Wallops Island, reaching only 86 miles' altitude instead of 160 miles (1961).

* NASA selected Hughes Aircraft Co. for placing of a major subcontract by Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build seven Surveyor spacecraft designed for soft landings on the Moon (1961).

* Marshall Space Flight Center awarded contract to Douglas and Chance Vought to study launching manned exploratory expedition into lunar and interplanetary space from Earth orbits (1961).

* Federal Communications Commission allocated a radio frequency to the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. to establish the first space satellite communications link between Europe and the United States on an experimental basis, a program calling for NASA launching of a series of experimental communication satellites capable of relaying telephone calls, television programs, and other messages across the Atlantic (1961).

* NASA announced indefinite suspension of the programming of the wide-angle camera in Tiros II, the experimental weather observation satellite launched on November 23, 1960 (1961).

* Jet Propulsion Lab proposes a modified Apollo flight to fly around Mars and return to Earth (1965).

* Buzz Aldrin born 1930.

* Navy Bureau of Steam Engineering was allocated $100,000 to contract for the development and purchase of 200-hp radial aircooled engines from the Lawrance Aero Engine Corp (1920).

* Acting in response to a request from BuAer, the Navy Bureau of Engineering endorsed support for the National Bureau of Standards for the development of radio meteorographs. Later renamed radiosondes, these instruments were sent aloft on free balloons to measure pressure, temperature, and humidity of the upper atmosphere, and transmitted these data to ground stations for use in weather forecasting and flight planning (1936).

* Robert T. Jones, NACA Langley aeronautical scientist, formulated sweptback-wing concept to overcome shockwave effects at critical Mach numbers, and verified it in wind-tunnel experiments in March 1945 prior to learning of parallel German work. It was subsequently checked by the wing-flow technique before the first NACA report was issued in June (1945).

* ICBM Scientific Advisory Committee to the Air Force was transferred to the Office of the Secretary of Defense to assure common interchange of technical information on all missile programs (1956).

* United States and United Kingdom signed formal agreement covering minitrack station at Winkfield, England (1961).

* Under NASA contract, United Technology Corp. successfully completed ground tests of three 15,000-pound thrust segmented solid-propellent rockets. Each was made up of three 1,000-pound sections which were joined prior to firing.

* NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) awarded contracts to North American Aviation and Ryan Aeronautical to develop paraglider recovery system for the Saturn booster, based upon concept developed by Francis M. Rogallo of NASA's Langley Research Center (1961).

* Headline news in Moscow was detailed Tass announcement that Strelka, one of two female dogs recovered from orbiting Spacecraft II in August 1960, had given birth to six puppies in good health. Pravda had announced 3 weeks earlier that one of the satellite-passenger dogs had given birth (1961).