History Lesson

Orville Wright was still alive when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed during 1945.

The Wright brothers are credited with inventing what we know as airplanes, and it must have been tremendously difficult for Orville Wright, whose brother Wilbur died in 1912, to see his life's great achievement be responsible for the greatest single act of destruction man had ever seen. During 1945, US Air Force planes dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing at least 129,000 people.

Orville died in 1948 and expressed sadness in an interview about the death and destruction brought about by the bombers of World War II. He said, "We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong ... No, I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is, I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses."

Happy National Aviation Day

During 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation 2343, making August 19, Orville Wright’s birthday, National Aviation Day.

Airplanes

The first powered airplane flight by Orville Wright was on December 30, 1903.