#OTD in 1950 President Harry S. Truman dedicated Friendship International Airport. Now known as BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport (bwi_airport), the Baltimore Aviation Commission started planning for a new airport to serve the Baltimore-Washington area in 1944 by acquiring a 3,200-acre tract of land near Linthicum Heights. Only a 15-minute drive from downtown Baltimore, most of this land was purchased from Friendship Methodist Church and ground was broken in 1947. An Eastern Airlines plane en route from Atlanta to Newark was the first scheduled flight into the airport, landing just after midnight on July 23, 1950 and viewed by 300 spectators. In 1972, the Maryland Department of Transportation purchased Friendship International Airport from Baltimore City and the Maryland State Aviation Administration assumed operations. It was then renamed Baltimore/Washington International Airport the subsequent year. In 2005 the airport received a new name once again: Baltimore/Washington International ...