The Mystery of the Wright Flyer Wings, Part I
"' Tis strange - but true; for truth is always Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold! How oft would vice and virtue places change! The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral sea Would show mankind their souls' antipodes." --Lord Byron ".. .the wings of that plane they left with me and I took them over to my home on the beach "-- Adam Etheridge, eye witness, December 17, 1903 The Claim of the Smithsonian Institution: The Wright Flyer displayed at the Smithsonian, we are told, is the very plane that was the "first to fly" on December 17, 1903