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Today in History 12/17 (Wright Brothers)

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Orville Wright at the controls, making the first powered, controlled, sustained flight, with Wilbur Wright running alongside (Orville Wright and John T. Daniels via LOC)(1903) Wright brothers fly plane for first time
After years of working in secrecy, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully test a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft, which stays aloft for 12 seconds and covers 120 feet, near Kitty Hawk, NC. They’ll send their father a telegram of their achievement, telling him to alert the press, but newspapers will pass and few people will learn of the feat until they invite reporters to later test flights.
The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were two American aviators, engineers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world’s first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft on December 17, 1903, four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1904–05 the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.
Buried: Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum
Founder: Wilbur Wright

First successful flight of the Wright Flyer, by the Wright brothers. The machine traveled 120 ft (36.6 m) in 12 seconds at 10:35 a.m. at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville Wright was at the controls of the machine, lying prone on the lower wing with his hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright ran alongside to balance the machine, and just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing in the photo. The starting rail, the wing-rest, a coil box, and other items needed for flight preparation are visible behind the machine. This is described as
First flight of the Wright Flyer I, December 17, 1903, Orville piloting, Wilbur running at wingtip.
wiki/Wright_brothers
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(1903) Wright brothers fly plane for first time.
Also on this day,

1967 | Australia prime minister disappears out on a swim
Prime Minister Harold Holt vanishes near Portsea, Victoria, while swimming in the ocean with several friends. A search fails to find any trace of Holt and two days later he will be presumed drowned and declared dead. Speculation, never proved, will rise that Holt killed himself.
1989 | Middle America skewered as ‘The Simpsons’ premieres
The new Fox animated series, created by cartoonist Matt Groening, satirizes the American middle class via the Simpson family — Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and little Maggie. The show will become the longest running scripted prime-time TV show of all time.
1991 | End date for USSR as Yeltsin administration says Soviet Union will cease to exist
A spokesman for Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin announces that the Soviet Union will dissolve on or before New Year’s Eve. Yeltsin himself puts it more bluntly: “There will be no more red flag.” The public greets this with a shrug, as most former Soviet republics had already declared independence from the USSR.

Today in History 12/17/17

Boris Yeltsin gestures on December 30, 1991 in Minsk, Belarus (© Wojtek Laski/Laski Diffusion/Getty Image)(1991) Yeltsin administration says Soviet Union will cease to exist
A spokesman for Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin announces that the Soviet Union will dissolve on or before New Year's Eve. Yeltsin himself puts it more bluntly: "There will be no more red flag." The public greets this with a shrug, as most former Soviet republics had already declared independence from the USSR.
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. During the late 1980s, Yeltsin had been a member of the Politburo, and in late 1987 tendered a letter of resignation in protest. No one had resigned from the Politburo before. This act branded Yeltsin as a rebel and led to his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure.
Lived: Feb 01, 1931 - Apr 23, 2007 (age 76)
Height: 6' 2" (1.87 m)
Spouse: Naina Yeltsina (m. 1956 - 2007)
Party: Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Buried: Novodevichy Cemetery
Previous offices: President of Russia (1991 - 1999) · Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1990 - 1991)
Highlights
  • 1956: Boris Yeltsin married Naina Yeltsina on September 28, 1956.

  • 1990: On 4 March 1990, Yeltsin was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia representing Sverdlovsk with 72% of the vote.

  • 1991: On 12 June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), at that time one of the 15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union.

  • 1993: Ongoing confrontations with the Supreme Soviet climaxed in the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis in which Yeltsin illegally ordered the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet parliament, which as a result attempted to remove him from office.

  • 1996: In mid-1996, Chubais and Yeltsin recruited a team of a handful of financial and media oligarchs to bankroll the Yeltsin campaign and guaranteed favorable media coverage the president on national television and in leading newspapers.

  • 2007: Boris Yeltsin died of congestive heart failure on 23 April 2007, aged 76.


RIAN archive 859348 US President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin
President Yeltsin with US President George H. W. Bush, 1 June 1992. Russian-US summit. Russian President Boris Yeltsin paying a state visit to the United States. From left: US President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin attending lunch at the Russian Embassy in the United States.

wiki/Boris_Yeltsin
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Daily Pic (Christmas Island Crab)

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Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures

Feeling crabby?

Bright red crabs like this one number in the tens of millions here on Christmas Island, a territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean. It’s warm on the island this time of year, and these crabs are migrating to the sea, where they will mate and spawn. The event is quite a spectacle—onlookers will see rivers of crabs, thousands of them at a time climbing over fences and crossing roads on their journey, which attracts tourists to the remote destination. This isle itself was named by an English sea captain who discovered the destination on Christmas Day of 1643.

Daily Pic 12/10/17

© Sergey Gorshkov/Minden Pictures

Siberian jay, Putorana Plateau, Siberia, Russia