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

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The event

• 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.

20th century

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 · 1969 Bits of the Wright Flyer have been to the Moon and Mars.
• 1903 Tsiolkovsky published his rocket equation in 1903 — the year the Wright brothers first flew.
• 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.

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