Tsiolkovsky published his rocket equation in 1903 — the year the Wright brothers first flew.
Deaf from the age of nine, he was self-taught and spent his life as a provincial schoolteacher.
The events
- Wright brothers' first flight1903 · Kitty Hawk. On 17 December 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, sustained flight in a powered aeroplane. The first attempt lasted just 12 seconds but opened the age of aviation, which within half a century transformed war, travel and the world.
- Sputnik 1, the first satellite1957 · Baikonur. On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union put the first artificial Earth satellite into orbit, its radio beeps picked up around the world. The launch opened the Space Age and started the space race between the USSR and the United States.
More amazing facts
- 1903 · 1961 · 1969 Just 58 years separate the Wright brothers' first flight from Gagarin's, and 66 from the Moon landing — some who saw the first airplanes lived to see the Moon.
- 1903 The Wright brothers' first flight was shorter than a Boeing 747's wingspan: Orville covered 37 metres, while the first jumbo jet's wings spanned about 60.
- 1903 · 1969 Bits of the Wright Flyer have been to the Moon and Mars.
- 1903 · 1913 Just ten years after the Wright brothers' first flight, a plane with a toilet took off. Sikorsky's four-engined Ilya Muromets of 1913 also had a heated cabin, a bedroom and electric light.
- 1903 The Bolsheviks took their name from the 'majority' at the 1903 party congress — even though on the key dispute, who counted as a party member, Martov's supporters, the future Mensheviks, won the vote.
- 1903 · 1904 In 1904 a physicist debunked a discovery by slipping part of the apparatus into his pocket.