There have been occasional charges against the Smithsonian Institution that they have changed history in their exhibits, such as their prominent (and incorrect) identification of Thomas Edison as the inventor of our system of electrical generation and electric motors. To promote the memory of the third secretry of the Smithsonian, Samuel Pierpoint Langley, the directors and exhibit designers perpetrated a similar fraud for four decades. Langley, who made significant contributions to science, did not develop the first airplane capable of sustained controlled flight, but the Smithsonian paid Glenn Curtiss (rival and adversary to the Wright Brothers) to rework Langley's plane and fly it, claiming that except for the accidents of the launch mechanism the plane would have flown. In disgust, Orville Wright had the original Wright Flyer exhibited in London until the Smithsonian recanted its claim in 1942 and the Wright's legitimate pioneering craft took its place 45 years to the hour after it first flew. Langle's failure was attempting to simply make everything four times larger than his successful models, but air resistance and the strength of materials don't work quite that way. But because of his successors at the Smithsonian he will be best remembered for the fraud committed to honor him.
In other transportation history, today marks the first America's Cup victory (it wasn't called that then) and the first time a US president rode in an automobile. The Plantagenet dynasty (starting in 1216 with Henry III) gave way to the house of Tudor, again starting with a Henry - Henry Tudor who reigned as Henry VII. We also see a slave uprising against French colonial rule that changed the course of US history but which the US didn't recognize until after the Civil War.
1485 - King Richard III of England is killed in battle at Bosworth Field, Leicestershire by troops commanded by Sir William Stanley and loyal to Henry Tudor. Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets and the last king of England to die in battle.
1791 - Slaves revolted against French colonial government of Haiti, starting in San Domingo. Long bloody revolution ended with Napoleon abandoning French ambitions in Americas, leading to sale of Louisiana to the US in 1803.
1851 - The US schooner America from the New York Yacht Club triumphs over the British schooner Aurora and thirteen other yachts at the Royal Yacht Squadron in England, winning a silver ewer trophy that has since been named after the victorious boat.
1902 - President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile, in Hartford, Connecticut.
1953 - The last prisoners leave Devil's Island, the legendary penal colony operated by France from 1852 in French Guiana.
1968 - Pope Paul VI arrived at Bogota, Colombia for a conference of Latin American bishops in Medellin. It was the first visit of a pope to the New World that Pope Julius II had partitioned with the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494.
The Queenship of Mary, Roman Catholic festival established following Pope Pius XII's 1954 encyclical Ad caeli Reginam, also known as The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the Festival of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
1834 - Samuel Pierpoint Langley, US scientist - Born at Roxbury, Massachusetts, received education through high school there, augmented by reading science in Boston libraries. Worked as civil engineer in Chicago and then St Louis, returned to Boston as an assistant at Harvard Observatory, taught mathematics at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Professor of physics and astronomy, director of Allegheny Observatory at Western University of Pennsylvania (now University of Pittsburgh) 1867 to 1887. In 1869 established a standard "Allegheny Time" which was sent by telegraph to the railroads and other businesses for a payment of $1,000 per year. Invented the bolometer in 1878, a device able to detect radiant heat and measure differences in temperature of one hundred-thousandth of a degree (0.00001 C). Appointed as secretary of Smithsonian Institution in 1887. Wrote a treatise on aerodynamics in 1891, built a series of steam-powered "aerodromes" which were the first heavier-than-air aircaft to maintain powered flight - Aerodrome V flew 3000 feet (915 m) and Aerodrome VI flew 4200 feet (1280 m) in 1896. During Spanish American War secured $50,000 funding from War Department to develop surveillance aircraft, one-quarter scale unmanned models flew successfully when launched by a spring catapult from the roof of a houseboat on the Potomac River, developed light gasoline engines, but both 1903 launches landed instantly in the water. Funding was canceled, the Wright brothers flew nine days after his final flop, and he died, shattered by the defeat, on 27 February 1906.
Time brings all things to pass.
- Aeschylus
Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police
are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.
- Frank Herbert
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
- Charles Augustus Lindbergh
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
- Marechal Ferdinand Foch
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