Bits of the Wright Flyer have been to the Moon and Mars.
Neil Armstrong carried wing fabric and propeller wood on Apollo 11, and a scrap of wing fabric flew on the Mars helicopter Ingenuity.
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.
- Moon landing1969 · Cape Canaveral. Apollo 11 launched from Cape Canaveral on 16 July 1969, and on 20 July Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon while Michael Collins stayed in orbit. The landing was the climax of the space race.
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 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.