The Smithsonian Institution originally credited the first flight not to the Wright brothers but to Samuel Langley, one of its former secretaries. Langley supporters claimed his “aerodrome” flew several years before the Wright Flyer, though there was little proof. The Wright brothers, upset at the historic slight, loaned their famous plane to a London museum. In the 1940s the Smithsonian apologized for the error, and Orville Wright bequeathed the Flyer to the institution in his will.