When did the Wright brothers first fly?

Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first sustained, powered and controlled flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft on 17 December 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first flight, with Orville at the controls, lasted just 12 seconds and covered about 37 metres, but by the end of the day the brothers had flown as far as 260 metres. Their success came from years of methodical experiments, including building their own wind tunnel to test wing shapes and inventing a system of wing-warping to control the aircraft in the air. Within a few years, aviation advanced rapidly, transforming travel and warfare.