Colorado history

Friday, October 30, 2026

A Denver kid who took the left seat, a choreographer who made Burnett look easy, and the thermometer that bottomed out at three degrees.

Emily Howell Warner is born in Denver and eventually makes the cockpit stop asking

1939 · Denver

Born with a twin sister on this day, she becomes the first woman hired as a permanent pilot by a scheduled U.S. airline and the first to reach captain.

Emily Joyce Hanrahan arrived in Denver on October 30, 1939. She and her twin, Eileen, grew up with four brothers. After high school she considered becoming a stewardess, booked a Frontier DC-3 round-trip to Gunnison to check the job, and got invited into the cockpit on the way home. That was the end of the stewardess plan.

She took lessons, became a flight instructor and school manager at Clinton Aviation in Denver, and spent years applying to airlines. Frontier hired her in 1973 as second officer. In 1976 she became the first woman captain on a scheduled U.S. airline. Her uniform is at the Smithsonian. She logged more than 21,000 hours and later worked as a Denver-based FAA inspector. The airplane, as she liked to say, does not care who is flying it.

She died in 2020 in the metro area. On her birthday the left seat is still open to whoever can fly it.

Sources: Wikipedia · National Air and Space Museum · Colorado Women's Hall of Fame

Ernie Flatt is born in Denver and later teaches Carol Burnett how to look like she is not working

1918 · Denver

The future Emmy-winning choreographer of The Carol Burnett Show arrives in Denver. He later danced in Singin’ in the Rain and staged the numbers that made variety television look effortless.

Ernest Orville Flatt was born in Denver on October 30, 1918. The family settled in Englewood. He danced in the choruses of Hollywood musicals, worked with Gene Kelly on Singin’ in the Rain, and choreographed the film version of Anything Goes. On television he ran the Ernie Flatt Dancers on The Garry Moore Show, The Judy Garland Show, and, for years, The Carol Burnett Show.

He won an Emmy for the Burnett show in 1971 and picked up more nominations. Broadway credits include Sugar Babies with Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller. He died in Taos in 1995. Denver’s contribution to the sketch that made the whole country pull its pants up and do the Charleston was a kid from Englewood who never stopped counting the steps.

On his birthday the curtain still goes up somewhere, and someone is still trying to make it look easy.

Sources: Wikipedia · IBDB

October 30 decides to be either 81 degrees or three, with a side of 6.1 inches of snow

2019 · Denver

The date holds Denver’s record high of 81°F (1950), its record low of 3°F (2019), and its snowiest single-day total of 6.1 inches (1929).

October 30 is one of those Denver dates that refuses to pick a personality. In 1950 the high hit 81°F. In 2019 the low reached 3°F after a cold front and snow that closed parts of I-70 east of town and left hundreds of passengers stranded at DIA. The previous record low for the date was 7°F in 1991.

In 1929 the storm that started on the 28th dumped 16.2 inches over four days. Most of it fell on the 29th (8.5 inches), with another 6.1 inches on the 30th—the snowiest October 30 on the books. Temperatures stayed in the 20s. In 1905 downtown measured 11 inches from the evening of the 29th through the evening of the 30th.

Halloween is tomorrow. The costume that works at 81 does not work at 3. Denver has been making that point for a long time.

Sources: Extreme Weather Watch · Thornton Weather / NWS history · National Weather Service Denver