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At 10 O’clock on the morning of the 17th of December, 1903 five members of the Lifesaving Station at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina trudged grimly down the wooden steps and across the sand.  With their collars turned up against a cutting winter wind, they joined two brothers who had asked them to help test an experimental machine that few of them thought would ever work.  After checking the wind speed, setting up their cameras and synchronizing their watches, the two Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, started the engine of their odd contraption and pushed off gingerly down a rickety wooden track.  Twelve seconds later, the Kitty Hawk Flyer returned to the sands, changing the course of aviation and, with it, modern history.

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