When you watch the news or hang out on social media, it’s pretty easy to forget about the intellect and determination that define the best among us. So every now and then, it’s refreshing to be reminded that, when the conditions are correct, humans can be totally awesome. With that in mind, I’ve opted to feature a couple Americans who took their game to a higher level—literally. Here are 10 facts on the Wright brothers you should know.
1
Wilbur Wright was born in 1867 in Millville, Indiana, and Orville was born in 1871 in Dayton, Ohio. They were two of seven children born to Milton Wright, a bishop, and Susan Catherine Koerner Wright. Milton’s work involved a significant amount of travel, but Dayton served as home base. (The Ohio city is in the heart of the Rust Belt, a piece of information that may be completely irrelevant but I had to sneak in.)
2
Neither Wilbur nor Orville received a high school diploma or attended college. Their younger sister, Katharine, was the only Wright child to complete college (Oberlin College to be exact). She also provided her two brothers immense support in their pursuits.
3
Neither Wilbur nor Orville ever married or had children.
4
The brothers weren’t exactly born to fly. Early endeavors included owning a printing business, launching a few fleeting newspapers, and running a bicycle shop. Along the way, a serious interest in the concept of flight took hold.
5
On December 17, 1903, the brothers achieved what is generally accepted to be the first sustained flight of a powered, controlled, and heavier-than-air aircraft with a pilot on board. That mouthful occurred using the Wright Flyer, also known as…an airplane. The event took place on the Outer Banks of North Carolina (near Kitty Hawk) with Orville at the helm, logging a flight time of 12 seconds, a distance of 120 feet, and an altitude of around 10 feet. Wilbur and Orville flew a total of four flights on that noteworthy day, an occasion that both Ohio and North Carolina like to claim as their own.
6
Skepticism reigned supreme after the accomplishment, with the brothers continuing to toil in relative anonymity back near Dayton. Recognition and fame did ultimately come, though so did legal battles over relevant patents. And to this day, competing claims for the first powered flight haven’t completely disappeared.
7
The brothers ended up combining their business experience with their flight experience, incorporating the relatively short-lived Wright Company—an airplane manufacturer and flight school—in 1909.
8
Wilbur died in 1912 at age 45 from typhoid fever, and Orville died in 1948 at age 76 from a heart attack. Both were buried at Woodland Cemetery in Dayton.
9
The Wright Flyer wasn’t displayed at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution until 1948. The institution had previously claimed a failed machine of its former secretary as the first heavier-than-air aircraft capable of manned, powered flight. The dispute was finally settled after Orville’s death.
10
Wright State University, a public research university in Dayton, is named after the siblings.
Of course, these cursory facts on the Wright brothers don’t do justice to the story. It’s a tale of passion, superior intellect, hard work, and what turned out to be a game-changing achievement. If you’re interested, it’s captured brilliantly by the historian David McCullough in his engrossing biography of the duo. Perhaps the most uplifting part is that there were no reports of air rage.
