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The New York Times said a flying machine might take a million years.

69 days later, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew one.

Two bicycle makers. Neither had a high-school diploma.

Yet for almost 5 years, much of the world doubted them.

At home in Ohio, they read how a famous glider pilot lost his balance and fell to his death.

Others chased engines. The brothers chased the balance he lacked, and found it in birds twisting their wingtips.

But at Kitty Hawk, their glider barely lifted, far less than the books promised.

On the way home, Wilbur lost hope: "I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for 50 years."

So they checked the math. A century-old textbook number was wrong. In a homemade wind tunnel, they tested 200 tiny wings to get it right.

After nearly 1,000 glides, they could tilt, climb and turn. Every plane since steers that way.

They added an engine. A coin toss gave Wilbur the first try. He came down in seconds.

3 days later, Orville flew: 12 seconds, 120 feet.

Back home, they circled a cow pasture for over half an hour, then kept the plane hidden until someone signed a contract.

A Paris paper said they were either fliers or liars.

When the buyers signed, Wilbur flew in public in France. Within 2 minutes, the doubters became believers.

Rivals used their steering without paying. The brothers sued for years, and critics called them greedy. In the middle of the fight, Wilbur died of typhoid fever, at 45.

Orville lived almost 36 years without him, long enough to fly in an airliner with wings longer than his first flight.

In 2021, a scrap of their first plane flew on Mars.