Orville lived to the ripe old age of 76 which meant he saw over 40 years of aviation development.
Just wondering what the most modern type of plane he got to ride in was and from where to where.
According to wiki:
Without checking Wiki, I was going to say that the Lockheed Constellation was the most modern civilian aircraft in 1948.
He died the same day as Mahatma Gandhi.
The strange thing is that Wright seems like a 19th century historical figure while Gandhi seems like a 20th century historical figure. But Gandhi was actually two years older than Wright.
The obvious response to that is to look at when they were doing the things they were famous for. On the balance, Wright was doing famous things at an earlier age. I would have called both of them early 20th century historical figures, but Wright is probably most famous for his first flight and then development in the first decade of the 20th century, while Gandhi is probably most famous for his political activities in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. No one really cares what Wright did after 1915 when he sold the company (and arguably earlier than that), and while Gandhi was politically active starting in the first decade of the 20th century, it really was his assumption of leadership in the Indian National Congress in 1920 that brought him notice.
I would suspect that this is pretty common when comparing people who are known for very different things. In particular, people who are powerful politically tend to be older.
Another common example of this is Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. A lot of people don’t realize they were born only a few weeks apart because they seem to belong to different eras of history.
Neil Armstrong was only a year younger than either.
From the first flight to the moon landing in 8 posts!
…one giant leap for discussionkind.
Well if we go by Wrights and spaceflights.
In 1948, when Orville died
Yuri Gagarin was a teenager
Neil Armstrong was preparing to go to college
Alan Shepard was already a WW2 veteren
Sputnik was only 9 years away.
…and JFK was reelected to his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Truman defeated Dewey.
That’s not what I heard.