If you ask an American who invented the airplane, the answer does not wait: The Wright brothers, of course!
But if the question is to a Brazilian, the answer will be: Alberto Santos Dumont, of course!
It's an old controversy, the Wrights flew before, but the Brazilians say that it was not flying, for several reasons:
The plane did not start by its own means, it was launched by a catapult; Brazilians say that it is called push, not flight. And they add that nobody saw them, that there were no witnesses of that first flight.
The truth is that at the end of the 19th century, Santos Dumont, being a young man, crossed the Atlantic Sea to get to France and visit a man who was already old, with a white beard. That man, already old, was Jules Verne and Santos Dumont promised him that he would make his dream of flying come true; and in 1906, for 30 minutes, on a 12-kilometer tour, he flew around the Eiffel Tower.
Santos Dumont always dreamed that humans, when flying, could travel and get to know each other better, and said that aviation was going to be the path of world peace.
For that reason, when in the first world war the airplanes were used like combat arms, it asked to the League of the Nations that prohibited that use.
We remember him because on a day like today, July 20, 1873, Santos Dumont was coming to this world, to remind us that it is human's task to fly and rise above the pettiness and vicissitudes of life.
