* 1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden ( and only ) flight of the Spruce Goose or H-4 The Hercules ; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.

Between 1967 and 1993 Scenic Airlines grew to be one of the world's largest fixed-wing air tour operations.

* Model 34 Twin-Quad Prototype small airliner ; the largest aircraft ever built by Beechcraft

In 1986, Bombardier acquired Canadair after the Canadian government-owned aircraft manufacturing company had recorded the largest corporate loss in Canadian business history.

Following the fall of the Shah of Iran and the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 – 1980, the West became concerned with ensuring the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, and the US received permission for a $ 400 million expansion of the military facilities on Diego Garcia consisting of two parallel runways, expansive parking aprons for heavy bombers, 20 new anchorages in the lagoon, a deep water pier, port facilities for the largest naval vessels in the US or British fleet, aircraft hangars, maintenance buildings and an air terminal, a fuel storage area, and billeting and messing facilities for thousands of sailors and support personnel.

The largest failure for the Kampfgeschwader, however, was saddling them with an aircraft meant to be as big and as apparently capable as any Allied four-engined " heavy bomber " – the perpetually-troubled Heinkel He 177 – which had been condemned to being designed to carry out moderate angle dive bombing missions from the day that the RLM accepted it for production in November 1937, making it overweight from the start, and mandating design features that led its " welded-together engines ", a pair of cumbersome Daimler-Benz DB 606 " power systems ", to perpetually catching fire in flight during operational missons over both the Eastern Front and the United Kingdom.

Under his leadership, Canada supported the United Nations ( U. N .) in the Korean War and committed the third largest overall contribution of troops, ships and aircraft to the U. N. forces to the conflict.

Strategic Air Command in the United Kingdom was among the command's largest overseas concentrations of forces, with additional forces at bases in North Africa during the 1950s and 1960s in addition to SAC bomber, tanker, and / or reconnaissance aircraft assets at the former Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and at Andersen AFB, Guam, RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom and the former NAS Keflavik, Iceland through the 1990s.

* December 19 – Fire sweeps through the USS Constellation, to become the U. S. Navy's largest aircraft carrier, while she is under construction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

By the end of World War Two, the US had built eight new wind tunnels, including the largest one in the world at Moffett Field near Sunnyvale, California, which was designed to test full size aircraft at speeds of less than 250 mph and a vertical wind tunnel at Wright Field, Ohio, where the wind stream is upwards for the testing of models in spin situations and the concepts and engineering designs for the first primitive helicopters flown in the US.

Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, ATR ( aircraft manufacturer ), the Aerospace Valley, considered as a cluster global, the city also host l ' Oncopole de Toulouse, the largest cancer research centre in Europe, the European headquarters of Intel and CNES's Toulouse Space Centre ( CST ), the largest space centre in Europe.

An-225 is the largest operating aircraft in the world

Advertised in 1918 as the largest aircraft company in the world, Airco established the first airline in the United Kingdom, Aircraft Transport and Travel Limited, as a subsidiary.

By December 1918, Holt Thomas claimed in an advertisement that Airco was the largest aircraft company in the world and was building aeroplanes, engines and propellors in large numbers, as well as airships and flying boats.

Antonov An-2 is the largest single-engine biplane ever made, and the longest produced aircraft ever ( since 1947 ; currently produced in China )

* Boeing 747 " jumbo jet " – an iconic aircraft, it was the world's largest passenger airliner between 1969 and 2005

* Antonov An-225 " Mriya " – the world's largest and heaviest aircraft.

Naturally the airline tries to maximize the number of seats available in every aircraft to carry the largest possible ( and therefore most profitable ) number of passengers.

Occasionally baggage holds may be referred to as cargo decks on the largest of aircraft.

In the 1920s, Fokker entered its glory years, becoming the world's largest aircraft manufacturer by late 1920s.

The by far largest contractor is Widerøe with their fleet of de Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft, but also Danish Air Transport, Lufttransport and Kato Airline have won bids.

Particularly noteworthy were the large flying boats the company produced-especially the largest aircraft designed built and flown by any of the Axis forces, the Bv 238, as well as ingenious approaches to aircraft building that even featured asymmetric designs.

* Blohm & Voss BV 238 flying-boat ( prototype ), the single largest Axis aircraft design of the war years to fly

Fonda said, " The image of Jane Fonda, Barbarella, Henry Fonda's daughter ... sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal ... the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine.

During the early part of this century, the Brown & Sharpe works in Providence were unchallenged as the largest single manufacturing facility devoted exclusively to precision machinery and tool manufacture anywhere in the world.

The ultimate objective of American policy is to help establish a world in which there is the largest possible measure of freedom and justice and peace and material prosperity ; ;

With a population of about 30 million, it has an area of, making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world.

Although the name actually applies to a group of snakes, it is often used to refer only to one species in particular, the common or green anaconda, Eunectes murinus, which is one of the largest snakes in the world.

With a membership currently estimated at over 85 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The largest archipelagic state in the world, by area and population, is Indonesia.

Peru also contains the largest goldmine in the world ; the Yanacocha goldmine.

The largest opencast amethyst vein in the world is in Maissau, Lower Austria.

* 1611 – Establishment of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, the largest Catholic university in the world.

* 1961 – The Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, once the largest electric railway in the world, ends operations.

The arid region, the Sahara — the largest desert in the world, covering — extends from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

Abadan Refinery is one of the largest in the world.

By 1938, it was the largest in the world.

By the 1890s, the company was the largest and most profitable industrial enterprise in the world.

In the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel was the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails, and coke in the world, with a capacity to produce approximately 2, 000 tons of pig metal per day.

* 1998 – In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Awaji Island with Honshū and costing about $ 3. 8 billion USD, opens to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.

In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group of Christians in the world.

Aon is the largest reinsurance broker in the world.

In 2011, Aon was ranked as the largest insurance broker in the world based on revenue.

In 1875, the Navy had 21 battleships and 173 warships of other types, ranking as the third largest navy in the world after the British and French navies.

* Lyn Evans-particle physicist and project leader of the Large Hadron Collider, the largest science experiment in the world.

It was the third largest AMPS network, by subscribers, in the world at the time of its turndown.

The Antarctic hosts the world largest protected area comprising 1. 07 million km < sup > 2 </ sup >, the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Marine Protection Area created in 2012.

* Lake Turkana, Kenya ( the largest alkali lake in the world )

The town is famed for manufacturing the hardest and densest building bricks in the world, " The Accrington NORI " ( iron ), which were used in the construction of the Empire State Building and for the foundations of Blackpool Tower ; famous for its football team and for having Europe's largest collection of Tiffany Glass.