The first powered airplane flight covered less distance than a jumbo jet's wingspan

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright flew the Wright Flyer 120 feet at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, staying airborne for just 12 seconds, watched by only five people. The brothers had spent four years testing gliders and building their own wind tunnel to work out aerodynamics everyone else had gotten wrong. Within a single lifetime, the same basic principle would carry humans to the Moon.

— Historical account, Wright Flyer — Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903