The Wright Brothers made their first flight on August 8 in 1903. Only five people were there to see it. Their first plane, the Flyer I, only flew that one day, and then a gust of wind flipped it over and wrecked it. All they had was a photograph and the reports of the handful of people there — but it turned out that was the way they wanted it.
In 1903, flying machines were getting lots of attention. Those new-fangled gasoline engines seemed like they’d be light enough and powerful enough to power a flight, and lots of people knew that several successful gliders had been tested (including by the Wrights). Orville and Wilbur didn’t want too much publicity for fear their ideas would be copied.
They shipped the wrecked flyer back to Ohio and in 1904 built the Flyer II. They decided not to travel back to Kitty Hawk for testing, and just used a nearby cow pasture. But not too nearby — they still didn’t want publicity. They invited a couple of reporters to their next flight test, but wouldn’t allow any photographs.
That didn’t matter, in the end, because the Flyer II never got off the ground. It had engine trouble, and there wasn’t any wind to help them take off. The reporters left and didn’t come back, concluding that these “Wright Brothers” didn’t know what they were doing. That was fine with the brothers, and in fact there’s been speculation ever since that they failed on purpose that day, just to throw everybody off.
If that was their plan, it worked perfectly. There were bigger operations elsewhere in the world trying to build a flying machine — most of them government funded. The Wrights only had their bicycle shop, and the more time they devoted to their “flyers,” the worse the business did. Their goal wasn’t just to fly, but to make money from it.
They privately tested the Flyer II, and managed to fly circles around the cow pasture for as long as five minutes. Or so they said; nobody else witnessed it. But they finally scrapped the Flyer II and used what they’d learned to build the Flyer III, which was the first one to be stable enough that it seemed like it might actually be practical someday. Wilbur was able to keep that one in the air until he ran out of fuel, about 40 minutes.
Enough people had seen Wilbur’s long flight that word reached the reporters again, but when they showed up to see a demonstration, the Wrights just told them to go away. They said they wouldn’t fly the machine again unless someone gave them a contract to buy it.
Without a demonstration, nobody would give them a contract. And without a contract, they wouldn’t give a demonstration. Nobody paid much attention to them, really. The US government had just spent $50,000 on the Langley Aerodrome, built by one of the world’s leading scientists, and it didn’t work; not even close. The thinking was that two bike mechanics with a homemade contraption had no chance of success.
It was even worse in Europe; by 1906, newspapers in France were calling the Wrights “bluffeurs.” In general, Europe was more technologically advanced than the US in those days; that’s where most of the advancements were being made in cars, not to mention other areas. And it was generally accepted that somebody was going to make a working flying machine pretty soon, and it would probably be somebody in Europe.
The Wrights didn’t fly at all from 1906 to 1907. They were spending their time trying to convince a government — any government — that their flyer worked. It seemed like the governments in Europe were slightly more open to the idea, so in 1908 Wilbur shipped their newest Flyer (the Model A) to France and on August 8 made the first public demonstration they’d held since their first flight five years before. To everybody’s astonishment, Wilbur flew figure 8s above a horse racing track at Le Mans.
After that, everybody believed them — and aviation progressed pretty quickly, so that by August 8, 1946, the Convair B-36 made its first flight. At the time it was the biggest propeller-powered plane ever made. In between the Model A Flyer and the B-36, August 8 1929 was the date the Graf Zeppelin began the first airborne flight around the world. In 1989, the space shuttle Columbia was launched on mission STS-28 — although who knows what it was up to; STS-28 was a secret military exercise.
The Wrights didn’t allow many photographs of their flyers until August 8, 1908 — but then 61 years later, on August 8, 1969, Iain Macmillan took a pretty famous photograph with no airplanes involved. It was in England — and turned out to be the cover photo for the Beatles’ album Abbey Road.
One thing you need for photography, of course, is light. You need light to play baseball, too, which is why the Chicago Cubs never played night games at home; Wrigley Field didn’t have any lights. By the 1980s it seemed like enough was enough, so they finally installed the lights and on August 8, 1988, played their first night game. Or tried to — they got rained out in the fourth inning. It’s not clear whether all the fans who read about it snickered.
Once you have a story like the ones above, you need a way to distribute your news. Thomas Edison provided one alternative on August 8, 1876 when he got the patent on his mimeograph. It would go on to pretty widespread use — but it wasn’t the familiar duplicator used in thousands of US schools up through the 1970s. Those were generally called mimeographs too, but if the copies they produced were light purple and had a certain odor, they were actually spirit duplicators instead. Real mimeograph machines use ink. It was just a question of misidentification.
Misidentification was what a certain gang was hoping for on August 8, 1963, when they pulled off the Great Train Robbery in England. Nearly all of them were caught anyway, although most of the money was never recovered. And at least one gang member — the one who was so careful he wore gloves even in their hideout — got away. The rest of the gang didn’t even know his name or where he was from. He might have been Harry Smith from Portsmouth — and if it was him, he did pretty well with his share of the loot. He ended up owning 28 houses, a hotel, and a club in Portsmouth. The rest of the gang only knew him as Mr. One.
Several movies have been at least loosely based on the Great Train Robbery, but there’s never been one that’s not either a comedy or mostly fiction. Supposedly the producer Dino De Laurentiis was interested in making one, but the project never came together. Maybe De Laurentiis was particularly interested in the event, seeing as how it happened on his birthday.
