July 12, 1876
He was born in Odessa into a merchant family. Sergey Utochkin - one of the first Russian test pilots.
I've crashed to my death four times. The rest are minor. I live on nothing but air and gasoline. Overall, I'm the happiest of Odessites.
Orphaned at an early age, he inherited a large fortune and was raised in various families. In one of them, his foster mother, who had gone mad, stabbed her children to death before his eyes. After this, he developed a stutter.
At the age of 15, he built his own yacht and won a sailing regatta with it.
He raced a steam tram and competed on a bicycle with a racehorse.
He made his first flight in his own hot air balloon at the age of 31. He taught himself to fly. At 33, he passed exams at the Odessa Aeroclub and became the second certified pilot in the country (after Mikhail Efimov).
He toured Russian cities, flying a biplane purchased from a banker. He attracted crowds of thousands. Over two years, he completed 150 flights in 70 cities.
My first flight lasted 12 minutes. That's a tiny amount of time when it's spent in the dull, gray, and deadening atmosphere of life on earth, but when you're flying, it's 720 seconds, and every second a new fire of excitement ignites.
In 1911, during the first ever collective flight from Petersburg в Moscow Utochkin's airplane crashed under Novgorod, and he himself ended up in the hospital with fractures. After the crash, he managed to hand over the fuel and helped start the propeller for another pilot, who was the only one to reach Moscow.
He returned to flying after a month and a half, but never fully recovered. In 1913, he was diagnosed with a mental disorder and began abusing morphine, cocaine, and hashish. He escaped from psychiatric hospitals and suffered from persecution complexes.
In 1913, he attempted to enter the Winter Palace and demanded that the Tsar be informed that "a famous aviator needed his protection." He lived in poverty in his final years, earning extra money by playing billiards.
He died in St. Petersburg from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1916, at the age of 39.
Flying is pure pleasure. If there's anything you're afraid of up there, it's only the ground.
