AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2015 - 30

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THIS MONTH IN AVIATION

November
NOVEMBER 13, 1907. French inventor
Paul Cornu flies the first helicopter
20 seconds in a one-foot hover.
NOVEMBER 22, 1909. The Wright Co.
is incorporated.
NOVEMBER 23, 1910.

Octave Chanute
dies at age 78.
November 18,
1913. Lincoln
Beachy flies his
Curtiss biplane
upside down and
performs the first
loop.
November 1918. Orville Wright
writes, "The Aeroplane has made
war so terrible that I do not believe
any country will again care to start
a war."
November 21, 1921. Wesley May
conducts the first midair refueling
by carrying a five-gallon can of
gasoline from his Lincoln Standard
biplane to the wing of a Curtiss
JN-4.
November 30, 1925. The Douglas
Aircraft Co. is organized.
November 28-29, 1928. Cmdr.
Richard E. Byrd leads the first
flight over the South Pole.
November 19, 1932. The monument commemorating the Wright
brothers' first flight is dedicated in
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
November 22, 1935. Pan Am
Airways flies the first Pacific airmail
from San Francisco.
November 15,
1942. The first
women report
for Army Air
Corps flight
training in
Texas.
November 20, 1953. A. Scott
Crossfield reaches a speed of
Mach 2.
November 3, 1957. Sputnik II is
launched, carrying the dog Laika.
November 1, 1958. The FAA is
established.
November 9, 1967. First Saturn V
moon rocket launched.
November 11, 1982. Space Shuttle
Columbia starts on its first mission.
November 10, 2005. Boeing's
Worldliner flies nonstop 12,586
miles from Hong Kong to London
in 22 hours and 42 minutes.
November 30, 2013. Amazon
announces plans for UAV deliveries.

30 | AOPA PILOT November 2015

Wrights chronicled in new book
Bestseller David McCullough explores two of aviation's heroes
B Y J U L I E S U M M E R S WA L K E R

SPEAKING BEFORE the Aero Club
of Washington, D.C., author David
McCullough told more than 250 aviation alphabet-group representatives
that he was pleased to be addressing an
audience who knows the subject matter
of his new book, The Wright Brothers,
released in May. But McCullough-
who researched his book for more than
four years-shared many stories about
aviation's patriarchs that most had
never heard.
"What surprised me about writing about the Wright brothers was how much I didn't
know, and how little most of the country knows. They had a bicycle shop, lived in Ohio,
and invented the airplane, period," he said. "But Edith Wharton wrote that she had seen a
Wright aeroplane in Paris and I was curious why a hick from Ohio was in France. Turns out
nobody believed anything at the time unless it was in Paris; it was not until Le Mans that anyone believed the Wrights had invented the airplane. Until then they were crackpots, nuts."

"History is a guide to navigation in
perilous times. History is who we are
and why we are the way we are."
-David McCullough
McCullough grew to deeply respect the two brothers as he read the more than 1,000
letters they wrote on various subjects, which are housed in the Library of Congress. "They
are humbling to read," he said. "The brothers were incapable of writing a short letter-
or a boring one," he said. He recalled the "extremely essential" influence of their sister
Katherine, whom he said deserves long overdue credit; the insistence of their father for
the brothers to read and have purpose; and their courage, both physical and intellectual.
"They never married, never went on a vacation. They had a purpose," he said. "After
reading their letters-and even if they had failed-I would have wanted to write about
them. There is a lot to learn from the Wright brothers. Adversity, they realized, was the
lift you need in life to succeed."
McCullough has written many historical novels; The Wright Brothers is his tenth book.
Unlike many of his works, McCullough kept this book under 1,000 pages. But if even
the 320-page book seems overwhelming, no worries-actor/producer Tom Hanks has
purchased the rights to make the movie, much as he did with McCullough's tome 1776.
EMAIL julie.walker@aopa.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2015