A Coin Toss Changed the History of Flight

We have seen the  iconic photo of Orville Wright flying in the plane in Kitty Hawk in 1903 and lifting off for 12 seconds and changing the history of modern flight forever. But what you don't know  is that history depended on which way a penny turned in the ocean wind three days before on Dec 14. That was when the Wright Brothers flipped a coin to see who would fly  first. Wilbur won and took off only to crash very quickly. Three days later Orville would fly and a box camera would record the image for all time.
 
And the world would make the assumption then that Orville was the father of flight as much as Wilbur. The fact that Wilbur would follow the 12 second flight with a 59 second flight would be hidden way in the annals of history. The first twelve seconds of flight had Orville as the pilot and historians would look up this as evidence he was as much a participant in cracking the code of flight as his brother. The coin toss would be mentioned then quickly forgotten.

But if the toss had gone the other way then Wilbur would have been the man to fly on Dec 17 1903 and he would have been the man whom history deemed to have broken the Rubicon of flight. History would have been altered forever. But as it was, the myth of the Wright Brothers began here.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

Fear of Flying

Jets hitting turbulence and throwing passengers into the roof. Jets disappearing over the ocean with no real clue as to what happened--everyone dies and even the black box cannot be found. Small airplanes that auger into the ground after the pilots have a conversation about icing on the wings. Airplanes that catch fire, lose wheels, lose parts, land in the Hudson after birds take out the engines. Is it any wonder people have a fear of flying?


Statistically planes are safer than cars. Tell that to the people who vanished after flying into hundred mile an hour winds over the ocean. Or the people who literally went through the ceiling when their plane hit turbulence. There is just something about getting into this sealed up tube with a bunch of other people and feeling all that steel go off the ground that is unsettling. Man was not meant to fly. We know this. We have to to go great lengths to do what birds do effortlessly. And sometimes it just doesn't work out.

Look at the people waiting to get on a plane and compare them to the people getting off a plane. Night and day. The people waiting are glum, absorbed in their magazines or their study of the plane that will hurl them into the sky. The people getting off are happy and humming to themselves--we made it we made it we made it. Is there anything stranger than watching the city beneath you turn into small building blocks as you go above the clouds and enter a world of vaporous monsters and roaring engines straining to get you up to thirty five thousand feet where gravity will be held at bay for the next few hours? No. It goes counter to everything we are about.

We are given a fear of heights. It is a protection mechanism. Don't stand on the edge of the cliff, don't hang out of the tree too far. Our ancestors took heed. They had too. There was no one taking their ticket and sticking them in a steel tube with kerosene burning engines that would blast them above the earth. They just had to worry about falling off cliffs or down steep inclines. But we are told that flying is perfectly safe. Everyone flies. So they do. But some people don't come back.

I took the train once. It was full of people who don't like to fly. They all had horror stories of the one flight that got them back to the old iron horse. They were stories of moments of terror while planes dropped and oxygen masks popped out. Moments where they saw their lives flash before their eyes. The difference is they didn't buy into the statistics that say we are perfectly safe. They made a decision. They just quit flying.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com