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Wright Brothers — NOT First in Flight
History has lied to us regarding the Wright Brothers. The two men from Ohio are usually heralded as “First in Flight”, and, to quote Wikipedia: (my emphasis)
They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heaver-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903
This is not the truth. Let’s look at several aviators that beat them to this coveted claim.
The first clearly recorded manned flight of any kind was in June 1783, in Paris, France, by the Montgolfier brothers in their custom hot-air balloon. Though the balloon was tethered to the ground, they were the first people to ascend into the air in a flying device. Several other French balloonists followed them on untethered flights in the remaining months of that year.
The first heavier-than-air flight astonishingly was carried out by a 10 year-old boy in 1849, flying a glider designed and built by Englishman George Cayley. And if you want to quibble with that, in 1853, at Cayley’s home in Yorkshire, England, an adult (reportedly Cayley’s footman who resigned in fear afterward!) flew one of Cayley’s revised gliders, this time with controls to manoeuvre the aircraft. They recorded the distance flown as 500 yards. Until now, inventors had…