June 24 · This Day in America
Stalin closes every road, rail line, and canal into West Berlin, gambling that two million people cut off inside the Soviet zone will force the Western powers out. There is no army that can punch a corridor through without starting a third world war in a city still in rubble from the last one. So the United States chooses something stranger and braver: it will feed a city from the sky. Within two days American crews launch Operation Vittles, flying coal and flour and powdered milk into Tempelhof around the clock. At its peak a plane lands every 45 seconds. One pilot starts dropping candy on tiny handkerchief parachutes for the children below, and the world calls him the Candy Bomber. For nearly a year the airlift roars overhead until the blockade simply gives up. A people once at war had decided that the right answer to a wall was an open hand.
Source: history.state.gov
Also on this day · 1947
Flying his small plane past Mount Rainier, businessman Kenneth Arnold reports nine shining objects streaking along the peaks faster than anything he knows. He says they moved like a saucer skipped across water. A newspaper turns that into "flying saucers," and the phrase escapes into the language. Within weeks, hundreds of Americans are scanning the sky. The modern UFO era starts here, on a clear afternoon over Washington State.
Source: airandspace.si.edu