About 5 p.m., Monday, July 4. What was then called an “aeroplane” is circling San Luis Obispo.

Here is the pilot: Hillery Beachey and his brother, Lincoln, were San Francisco aviators. Hillery was an experienced balloonist; he’d just learned to fly heavier-than-air aircraft that year. This photo was taken in 1910 Los Angeles; the plane is a copy of a Curtiss. Note the pilot’s position; he will, of course, take the full brunt of any crash.

A San Luis Obispo newspaper began covering the flight in late June. It was a first. The Beachey flier would take off from the town’s baseball field.

Preparing for takeoff on the southern edge of town; that looks like Beachey near the engine; note the juxtaposition of cowboy and flying machine at the left edge of the photograph.

Hillery’s brother, Lincoln, seems to have been the more prominent of the pair. This is an incredible photograph.

Both brothers–in this case, it was Lincoln–were injured in serious crashes. Both kept flying.

Lincoln boarding a daring design–a Beachey-Eaton monoplane–in 1915.

Lincoln waves goodbye on his last flight at the March 1915 Pan-Pacific Exhibition. He attempted a loop over San Francisco Bay, but he didn’t have enough altitude to finish the maneuver. When he tried to level the plane, struts and guywires snapped and the aircraft plunged into the Bay, between two ships. Lincoln, only 28 years old, drowned. His luckier brother died in 1964.