Frustrated by the refusal of the US Army to take their flying machine seriously, the Wright Brothers embarked on a different strategy. Simply fly their craft over various cities and get the public to accept the reality of flight.. but things got much weirder. People who witnessed them above their towns were accused of being crazy or drunk or just lying. Riverboat pilots who nearly collided with a few of their flights were quietly threatened with losing their licenses if they reported this mythical "flying machine". When the Wrights attempted to take someone out to the craft itself, they accused them of 'abductions'. When one flying attempt resulted in an obvious crash, with debris strewn across their sandy testing area, government officials denied the whole thing. "It was just one of those Civil War balloons", they said. When people took Daugerrotypes, they were accused of faking the pictures. Broke and vilified, the Wrights went back to fixing bicycles... Oh, and there was a war in Europe and for some reason the Huns won. What can you do?
