http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer

What's interesting is that the Wright brothers couldn't reproduce the flight:

"The landing broke the front elevator supports, which the Wrights hoped to repair for a possible four-mile (6 km) flight to Kitty Hawk village. Soon after, a heavy gust picked up the Flyer and tumbled it end over end, damaging it beyond any hope of quick repair. It was never flown again. [...]After a single statement to the press in January 1904 and a failed public demonstration in May, the Wright Brothers did not publicize their efforts, and other aviators who were working on the problem of flight (notably Alberto Santos-Dumont) were thought by the press to have preceded them by many years."

They did however develop the Flyer II in 1904, and their Flyer III in 1905 flew a "39-minute, 24-mile (39 km) nonstop circling flight on October 5." Arguably, controlled directional flight is a much more important feature.

But most interesting is this part of the story:

"The issue of control was correctly seen as critical by the Wrights, and they acquired a wide American patent intended to give them ownership of basic aerodynamic control, despite the brothers' (and others in pioneer aviation circles) likely complete lack of knowledge of the 1868 British patent regarding roll control for aircraft. This was fought in both American and European courts. European designers, however, were little affected by the litigation and continued their own development. The legal fight in the U.S., however, had a crushing effect on the nascent American aircraft industry, and by the time of World War I, the U.S. had no suitable military aircraft and had to purchase French and British models."

    Santos-Dumont was so enthusiastic about
    aviation that he made the drawings of the 
    Demoiselle available free of charge, 
    thinking that aviation would lead 
    to a new prosperous era for mankind.

http://web.archive.org/web/20091026211607/http://www.geociti...

http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/the-aviators-heart

Edit: it's a long article so here are a few highlights:

"His countenance appeared on cigar boxes and dinner plates. Toy replicas of his airships moved off the shelves at a brisk pace. Even bakers joined in, selling airship-shaped cakes with the colors of the Brazilian flag. Fashionable boutiques sold clothing and accessories inspired by his meticulous and impeccable style. Louis Cartier, a friend of his, even made a special wristwatch to use during flight, so he would not have to pull out his pocket watch while handling the controls. In fact, Santos-Dumont was responsible for making the wristwatch a fashionable accessory among men...

His showmanship and desire to share the feeling of flight led him to be part of many “firsts” in aviation history. In 1903, Aida de Acosta, a wealthy Cuban-American woman of nineteen years was visiting Paris, where she met Santos-Dumont. Fascinated with flying machines, she expressed her desire to pilot the airship herself. Surprisingly, he agreed—and after a few lessons, allowed her to fly it around Paris while he followed her on a bicycle shouting instructions from below (airship no. 9 only had a 3 horsepower engine and could barely conquer a light breeze). This made Acosta the first woman in history to fly a powered aircraft of any sort, some six months before the Wright Brothers first took flight in the United States."

Also, the fact that many americans are completely unaware of him and sometimes hostile when I tell his story makes me a bit mad... His one of the reasons I am pretty proud of being Brazilian and I believe a more positive role model than most that are around on TV these days.

It must have been a blast to see Santos-Dumont "parking" his dirigible in Paris when he went to restaurants and cafés.

BTW if you ever go to Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil, you can visit his summer home. There's also a replica of the 14-bis in the city.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Wings-Madness-Alberto-Santos-Dumont-In...

> First dogfight: Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader fired pistol shots at each other while airborne around November/December 1913 ...

Weirdly amusing.

And now for some poetry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9ment_Ader

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=casa+santos+dumont+em+pet...

Traian Vuia did it in March, same year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traian_Vuia#Flying_experiments