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Orville Write was born to Reverend Milton Wright and Susan Catherine Koerner Wright in Dayton, Ohio.
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Upon his return from a church business trip, Bishop Milton Wright brings home a toy Penaud helicopter. The toy inspires Wilbur and Orville's first interest in flight.
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The two open up a bicycle shop until 1907 that later helps pay for their inventions.
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The two brothers attended the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and while there, the Aeronautical exhibit draws their attention.
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Orville Wright got seriously sick with Typhoid Fever.
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Otto Lilienthal, German engineer and aeronautical pioneer, dies from injuries suffered in a crash while testing his latest single-surface glider. The tragedy renews the Wright brothers' interest in Lilienthal and the problem of human flight.
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Brothers build and Wilbur flies a biplane kite in order to test the "wing-warping" method of controlling a flying machine. This experiment encourages the Wrights to proceed with constructing a flying machine with a pilot.
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Wrights begin their experiments, flying their glider as a kite and as a man-carrying glider. About a dozen free flights are made although total time in the air is only about two minutes. They stay until October 23.
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Wilbur makes the first, but unsuccessful, attempt to fly a powered machine from slope of Big Kill Devil Hill. Machine stalls after 31/2 seconds in the air and lands 105 feet below.
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Wilbur makes the longest flight of the year: 24 1/5 miles in 39 minutes, 23 4/5 seconds, more than twenty-nine times around the field, at an average speed of thirty-eight miles per hour.