I sh quite. You're listening to Radio Lab, the podcast from New York Public Radio, WNYC, and NPR.

This is Radio Lab, I'm Jad, welcome to the podcast. This week, we've got an event to commemorate.

104 years ago, on a coldish, blustery day in North Carolina on the beach, two brothers figured out how to get a plane off the ground.

And because of this, we can now take vacations in faraway places.

We can overnight packages to one another.

But the interesting thing is if you go back in time and you look at that moment, you realize it was not inevitable.

It didn't have to be that way.

I suppose that's true with any moment history.

But in this one in particular, and I'll just give you an example.

A German guy by the name of Otto Lillianthol, he would have been the first. Had it not been for

a Sunday in 1896, he tried to take off. In his plane, it soared for a beat, and then nose dived

and crashed.

He broke his back.

And story goes, his dying words were, sacrifices must be made.

In this story, you're going to hear a lot of voices from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum,

a couple of experts, some authors, and, as it turns out out, the great grandniece of Wilburne Orville. Here it is.

There is something about being airborne.

Sort of an ethereal thing about it.

About leaving this earth.

Bang, you burst out on top of a field of clouds and it's freedom.

Gorgeous, bright sunlight.

Control.

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