Word: wilbur
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...Wilbur won the toss and went first: "He lay down on the lower wing with his hips in the padded wingwarping cradle, while Orville made a last-minute adjustment to the motor. When everything was ready, Wilbur tried to release the rope fastening the machine to the rail, but the thrust of the propellers was so great he could not get it loose and two of the men had to forcibly push the Flyer backward a few inches until the rope slipped free. Orville ran beside the machine, balancing it with one hand. In the other hand he held...
...brothers' first attempt at controlled powered flight belongs in history's blooper file. Orville's timepiece read 3 1/2 sec. when the Flyer reared and bounced into a hill. Wilbur had used too much rudder and stalled 15 ft. over the beach at Kitty Hawk, N.C. Orville's turn came three days later, Dec. 17, 1903, at 10:35 a.m. He took the clattering rig to an altitude of 10 ft. and traveled through the air for about 40 yds. before coming down hard enough to crack a skid...
...lift-off was recorded on a photographic plate; the bulb of a mounted bellows camera was put into the hand of a North Carolina surfman, who was told when to squeeze. His timing was perfect, but Wilbur was too excited to punch his stopwatch and had to estimate the duration of the event. Ten years later, a curtly precise Orville described what had happened during those unofficial 12 sec.: "a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed, and had finally landed...
Other changes have made journalists more willing to broach such previously unmentionable subjects. A succession of public scandals involving politicians in the '60s and '70s (including Senator Edward Kennedy's car accident at Chappaquiddick, which resulted in the death of a female companion, and Representative Wilbur Mills' drunken shenanigans at the Tidal Basin with a former stripper) brought the issue of womanizing to the forefront. With the breakdown of sexual taboos in the 1960s, public discussion of such topics became more acceptable. At the same time, with the changing status of women, society has grown less tolerant of the macho...
...helped to invent the Aqualung--the precursor of self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba)--and used it to excavate a vessel at the bottom of the Mediterranean near the island of Grand Congloue. "That opened the door to underwater exploration for the modern day," says Wilbur Garrett, editor of National Geographic, the venerable publication of the National Geographic Society, which has since financed many undersea missions by Cousteau and others. In 1959 Cousteau invented the first small submersible, a battery-powered diving saucer propelled by jets of water that could safely carry a two-person crew to a depth...