America 1908

On the first morning of 1908, human flight remained, for most Americans, in the realm of myth and dream. By the end of that year, the Wright brothers would be worldwide celebrities, heralded as the first people to conquer the sky. Yet that miraculous achievement was but one of many in 1908: Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet on a voyage around the globe, Robert Peary began his courageous dash to the North Pole, six automobiles left Times Square on an epic twenty-thousand-mile race to Paris, and Henry Ford introduced an oddly shaped new automobile called the Model T.