Wright brothers' very first successful airplane flight in 1903 covered a distance of one hundred and twenty feet, which is actually shorter than the wingspan of a modern Boeing 747.

A closer look

Wright brothers' very first successful airplane flight in 1903 covered a distance of one hundred and twenty feet, which is actually shorter than the wingspan of a modern Boeing 747. It took humanity less than seventy years to go from barely skimming over the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk for twelve seconds to building massive, pressurized aluminum tubes capable of hauling hundreds of ungrateful tourists across entire oceans while they complain about the legroom. The 747 wingspan stretches an impressive one hundred and ninety-five feet, providing enough surface area to keep a million pounds of metal suspended in the stratosphere. It is a profound testament to human ingenuity that we conquered the skies so rapidly, only to use that miraculous technology to overcharge people for lukewarm ginger ale!