On this day

in 1956, British test pilot Peter Twiss was the first man to fly at more than 1,000 mph.

In 1946, Twiss joined Fairey Aviation as a test pilot and flew many of the company's aircraft, including the Fairey Primer, Fairey Gannet, Fairey Firefly, and the Fairey Rotodyne compound-helicopter. He worked two years on the Fairey Delta 2, a supersonic delta-winged research plane. On 10 March 1956 this aircraft flown by Twiss broke the World Speed Record raising it to 1,132 mph (1811 km/h), an increase of some 300 mph (480 km/h) over the record set in year before by an F-100 Super Sabre, and thus became the first aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph in level flight.