From yesterday's Writer's Almanac:
On this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright had their first successful flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers picked Kitty Hawk because it was full of sand dunes that would cushion crash landings and it had high winds to help get the plane off the ground. But living there was almost unbearable. They endured sandstorms, coastal rains, and swarms of insects during the day. And at night, the wind was so bad that the brothers had to get out and hold on to their tent to keep it from blowing away.
In 1900, Orville and Wilbur started out with a kite controlled from the ground, and later took turns manning it in the air. Their father forbade them from flying together, to ensure that one brother could continue the experiments in the event of a fatal crash. When Wilbur stepped into the controls in October, he was unprepared for the sensation of flying. The plane was unpredictable, he couldn't plan out his moves, and he relied purely on instinct to adjust the plane up and down. Within a few moments, he overcompensated, nearly flipped the glider over and shouted to his brother, "Let me down!" Suffering months of spin-outs, broken struts, blackened eyes, and crash landings, the brothers left Kitty Hawk early. On the train back, Wilbur told his brother, "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly."
I used to teach a unit in the 5th grade about human attempts to fly. There is a fine account of the Wright Brothers struggle to build a flying machine written by historian David McCoullough but humans have envied birds for centuries and more. I think that it is the exact shape of a plane wing that can generate lift if the airfoil moves through the air. So, if a plane is to lift, it must move. Our world is quite different with planes, including big planes, and places called "airports". Now we have helicopters, too.
