115 years ago today, Wright Brothers slipped the surly bonds of Earth
Wikipedia description: Standing sixty feet (18.3 meters) tall and perched atop a ninety foot (27.4 meters) stabilized sand dune known as Kill Devil Hill, this monument towers over Wright Brothers National Memorial Park in Kill Devil Hills, NC. The park commemorates and preserves the site where the Wright brothers launched the world’s first successful sustained, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine. The inscription that wraps around the base of the monument states “In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Conceived by genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.” Photo by Ken Thomas, taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 in Dare County, NC, USA.
At this site, on December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright first achieved flight in a heavier-than-air machine.
“Surly bonds of Earth” refers to that poem written by the Canadian pilot, popular with the Air Force and almost every pilot I’ve ever known, “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
I am unaware of any proclamation for flag flying today, but you could have, had you wanted to and had you known.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2018 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Airplanes, History, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University