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RY important event that had a mighty bearing in today’s world took place 100 years ago this year. The Wright brothers’ first flight is bound to get plenty mileage near the date, which is not until the last month of the year.
This week I will give you a little snippet about this momentous event so that it will whet your appetite for more and more information as the year progresses.
Human beings have always wanted to fly and have been trying to design flying machines for centuries. Even the great 16th century artist Leonardo da Vinci made studies of aerodynamics and flying apparatus.
Just after 10.30am on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a powered aeroplane made the firstever controlled and sustained flight.
Designed by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, biplane Flyer 1 achieved an initial flight of some 36 metres (118 feet). The flight lasted 12 seconds, but history was made. The Wright brothers, who owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, had been experimenting with flight since 1896.
Amazing that it is just only 100 years ago since the Wright brothers launched flying. Today, millions of people fly daily all over the world. Another first that got under way in 1903 was the launch of the Aspirin tablet on October 10.
On that day the Bayer Company of Germany offered the drug for sale for the first time. Used as a general pain reliever, an effective remedy for headaches due to anxiety or overwork.
The new drug was developed by a Bayer chemist, Felix Hoffman, to relieve his father’s rheumatism. Aspirin was at first derived from salicylic acid – an extract of willow bark – but in 1899 Bayer developed a way of making it synthetically.
1903 also saw the first Tour de France, the world’s most gruelling sporting event. The first Tour was won on July 19 by the French cyclist Maurice Garin.
The Tour is a 19-day road race across France, devised by promoter Henri Desgrange. Stretching over 3,000 km (1,864 miles), the course starts in Paris and passes through Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes before finishing in Paris.
The race is divided into six stages, each of which varies in length and severity.
Only 20 of the 60 original entrants finished the race. Garin reached the finish more than two hours ahead of his nearest rival, the unknown cyclist Pothier, "The Butcher of Sens."
Lastly, another centenary of note is that of French scientist Marie Curie’s achievement as the first woman to win a Nobel prize.
She shared the award with her husband, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel for the work they had done to explore the mystery of radioactivity.
Marie Curie discovered that many elements are radioactive, including thorium, polonium and radium. So the year 1903 was quite a significant one.
