Airplane, airplane, in the sky,
Day or night, you always zoom by.
But do you know the story of how you came,
To roam the sky in everlasting fame.
A great discovery the Wrights had made,
And the memory of them shall never fade.

On April 16th, 1867,
A boy was born from the heavens.
The name of this child was Wilbur Wright,
Who would become the father of human flight.
On August 19th of 1871,
The life of Wilbur’s brother had also begun.
He was known as Orville Wright,
The other founder of human flight.

In 1878, their father gave them a toy,
Fragile and delicate, it was soon destroyed.
“Fly me! Fly me!” it always seemed to say,
Until the boys’ playfulness dug it a grave.
The toy was made of cork and bamboo,
Its body made of paper too.
The toy was powered by rubber bands,
And its memory forever stands.

A few years later, Otto Lilienthal was killed,
From testing a single-surface glider he had built.
Lilienthal was not only a German engineer,
But also an aeronautical pioneer.
The crash had renewed the brothers’ mind,
And the search for human flight became unconfined.
Similar to the Renaissance in the 14th century,
The death reawakened the Wrights’ curiosity.

By the end of the century, Wilbur had read,
Everything on flight, including experiments anyone led.
The brothers invented the airplane in their shop one day,
The smiled and exclaimed, “We got it! Hooray!”
They immediately started to build a kite,
Called it a glider, and made Kitty Hawk their test site.
With the results, Wilbur was sure,
That their idea of flying was secure.

The kept experimenting,
Figured out that long, narrow wings were ideal for flight,
Figured out how to control a plane at many heights,
Figured out how to move a plane freely in the sky,
Figured out how to contain the tendency to yaw from side to side.
The Wrights spent their summer all alone,
But discovered a heavier-than-air machine could be flown.

The Wrights helped the world by being explorers of aviation,
Like how Marie Curie invented the x-ray and found radiation,
And how Lewis and Clark explored the West,
And how Columbus discovered America, quite impressed.
The brothers were creative and determined,
Intelligent, risk-taking, and persistent.
They were in for a challenge,
And the sky, they always scavenged.

On the day of December 17th in 1903,
The first controlled, sustained human flight occurred in history.
It was by the 1903 Flyer,
A skeletal flying machine,
That filled the Wrights’ desire,
To created human flight, which nobody had ever seen.
The flight was made at Kitty Hawk on forgiving sand,
And lasted 12 seconds soaring above the land.
Wilbur made the last flight,
It lasted 59 seconds and was 260 meters in height.

The invention made the world a smaller place,
But also a difficulty the next generation will face.
The airplane brought families back together,
It is an international connector.
However, the airplane also fights in war internationally,
Tearing families apart is also an effortless reality.
Wilbur wanted to “make a mark in the world”,
And that is exactly what he and his brother did,
Revolutionizing peace and war until this day.