Kitty Hawk, 1903

The photo of the Wright Brothers&rsquo first flight is now an iconic one. And by a curious twist, the plane that they flew has acquired the name of the site. It was actually called the Wright Flyer, the design of which, the brothers had borrowed from the last of the gliders that they had created the previous year. As the US Smithsonian Institution describes it, the Wright Flyer was &lsquothe first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard&rsquo.

The plane of course had an immediate impact, and within a generation, aircrafts had become much more sophisticated. But what happened to the machine that influences how we travel these days To begin with, it was humbled in 1913, when it got inundated during the Great Dayton Flood, while in storage. The Wrights were at the time planning to burn it, as with their earlier gliders. But their manager persuaded them to preserve it for historical purposes instead. This paved the way to the aircraft being first displayed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and thereafter, finding a permanent home in the Smithsonian, where it was restored in 1985. Here&rsquos a rare photo of that amazing flying machine, that is just a 100 years old