1913: Flying at 3,500 feet over North Island near San Diego, pilot Lincoln Beachey points his Curtiss airplane downward. He pulls back on the controls at 1,000 feet, climbing until the nose of the airplane falls back beyond the vertical, and he completes the first inside loop by an American pilot.

Within weeks Beachey was “looping the loop” multiple times in succession. The maneuver became commonplace during World War I and continues to be the mainstay of aerobatic and combat pilots to this day.

Like the Wright brothers, Beachey was a young bicycle mechanic. The flying bug first bit him in...