August 19, 2019: Eighty years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Orville Wright’s birthday to be National Aviation Day.[1]
Born in 1871, Orville was 32 when he and his brother, Wilbur, launched the first power-driven airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers became known as the "fathers of modern aviation."[2]
Sadly, the Smithsonian Institute refused to acknowledge the Wright Brothers’ success for a quarter of a century. For years, they falsely claimed that their own plane was the first to fly. They also circulated rumors that the Wright Brothers didn’t really achieve flight. Those rumors were demolished when the two held countless air shows in Europe.
The Wright Brothers’ plane was not displayed at the Smithsonian until both Wilbur and Orville had died.
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