1. Aurel Vlaicu was born in the village of Bintinti in Transylvania, Austria-Hungary.
18 Facts About Aurel Vlaicu
1. 2.
In 1925, by then part of Romania, it was renamed Aurel Vlaicu, and is part of Geoagiu town.
3.
Aurel Vlaicu attended a Calvinist high school in Orastie and took his baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902.
4.
Aurel Vlaicu was a high school colleague of Petru Groza, and in Sibiu became friends with Octavian Goga.
5.
Between 1907 and 1908 Aurel Vlaicu served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and on September 1,1908, he took an engineer's position with the Opel car factory in Russelsheim.
6.
Aurel Vlaicu left Opel in March 1909 and returned to Bintinti, where, together with his brother, Ion, he built a glider which first flew in the summer of 1909.
7.
On September 28,1910, as a part of the fall military exercises, Aurel Vlaicu flew his airplane from Slatina to Piatra Olt carrying a message, an early instance of an airplane being used for military purposes.
8.
Between 23 and 30 June 1912 Aurel Vlaicu competed with it at the International Flight Week in Aspern-Vienna, against 42 other aviators, including Roland Garros.
9.
Aurel Vlaicu won prizes totaling 7,500 Austro-Hungarian krone for precision landing, projectile throwing and tight flying around a pole.
10.
Aurel Vlaicu perfected his design on rubber band powered models he began experimenting with while a student in Munich.
11.
Aurel Vlaicu's three powered airplanes had one central aluminium tubing, the flight controls in front, two counter-rotating propellers, one mounted ahead of the nacelle, and the other to the rear of the wing up high, partially counteracting each other's torque.
12.
Aurel Vlaicu's airplanes lacked ailerons, relying on just rudder and elevators for control, via a steering wheel mounted on a tiller.
13.
Aurel Vlaicu was expected to participate in the ASTRA festivities in Orastie, near Bintinti.
14.
Aurel Vlaicu was buried on September 17,1913, in Bellu Cemetery, in Bucharest.
15.
The most plausible cause of Aurel Vlaicu's death was that the airplane stalled while landing with the engine off.
16.
Aurel Vlaicu's name is listed second on the Romanian Airmen Heroes Memorial in Bucharest, after Gheorghe Caranda and before his friend and fellow pilot, Gheorghe Negel, who died in an aircraft crash one month after Vlaicu, on October 11,1913.
17.
Aurel Vlaicu's life was the subject of the novels "Maistorasul Aurel, ucenicul lui Dumnezeu: Cronica vremii si vietii lui Vlaicu" by Victor Ion Popa and "Flacaul din Bintinti" by Constantin Ghiban, and of a movie by Mircea Dragan.
18.
In 2010 a museum in Deva ordered several hundreds mugs to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Aurel Vlaicu's first powered flight.