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If you live in North Carolina, you must know about the Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903. It's the one memorialized on your auto license plate, the airplane picture with the words "First in Flight."
Yeah, that one.
But most of us don't know the brothers returned to Kitty Hawk for more flights five years later.
In his new book, "Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk" (Palgrave MacMillan; $25), East Carolina University's Larry Tise gives the first detailed account of those 1908 flights, which brought Orville and Wilbur international fame.
The Wright brothers had returned to Kitty Hawk in 1908 to fine-tune their flyer. They needed a machine reliable enough to fly for at least an hour with two passengers. That's what the U.S. military required before it would buy the technology.
They chose Kitty Hawk partly because it was isolated. They could perfect the plane in secret, without worrying about competitors stealing their designs. (Also, the sand softened hard landings.)
Here's the irony: Their flights ended up being about as secret as Michael Jackson's demise.
The brothers didn't realize that folks living on the Outer Banks would eagerly spread news of their visit. And any scoop about flight was hot news.
"You have to imagine if you picked up any major world paper, hardly any issue... would appear without some story about flying," Tise says.
Nifty historical note: The very first news that Wilbur and Orville had returned to the Outer Banks was published in The Charlotte Observer. And it was accurate, Tise says.
But after that, many newspapers published wild tales that apparently came from Outer Banks lifesavers and fishermen. The Virginian-Pilot, for instance, reported a flight that hovered at takeoff and just before landing and covered 20 miles over land. The story ran before any flight had taken off.
As news spread, reporters converged at Kitty Hawk and ultimately witnessed a world record for an observed flight: 71/2 minutes. Though on the scene, they still bungled facts.
Still, their stories brought the Wright brothers newfound fame.
Tise, East Carolina's Wilbur and Orville Wright distinguished professor of history, has been interested in unanswered questions associated with the Wright brothers since he was a boy growing up in Winston-Salem.
These days, nearly everything written about the Wright brothers is derived from other works, he says.
Not this book. It's the result of research from letters and newspapers in the U.S. and Europe. "I'm very, very proud to say this is based on all original stuff," he says. He should be.
