Wright Brothers First Flight – Dale’s Daily Data

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the historic flight of the Wright brothers' airplane at Kitty Hawk. Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight.

The brothers sent a telegram back home to their father in Ohio asking him to tell their hometown newspaper about what they did, but the Dayton Journal refused to run the story, saying the flights were too short to be important. The Wright brothers continued to make changes and improvements over the next couple of years, but the press coverage can be summed up with the headline in a 1906 Paris edition of the Herald Tribune, "Flyers or Liars?" The publisher of the Dayton Daily News admitted years later that no one at the paper actually believed it.

Ohio and North Carolina both take credit for the Wright brothers and their inventions. Ohio because the brothers developed and built their design in Dayton, and North Carolina because Kitty Hawk was where the first flight was made. That’s why even today Ohio's slogan is "Birthplace of Aviation" and North Carolina's is "First in Flight."