NZ farmer 'beat Wright brothers'

As America prepares to celebrate the centenary of the world's first flight by the Wright brothers, there comes a potentially devastating claim from Down Under: an eccentric New Zealand farmer beat them to it.

Richard Pearse took to the air in March 1903 in a high-wing bamboo monoplane he designed and built himself. Nine months later, Wilbur and Orville Wright's Flyer soared over Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. The crucial difference is that while the Wright brothers' achievements are well documented, Pearse, who was known as "Mad Dick" for his obsession with trying to fly, failed to make notes and was watched only by a handful of locals.

But the world is now waking up to his achievement. In the US, the influential web magazine salon.com has published an article telling Americans that they may have been beaten by a British colonial. And in New Zealand, there are plans to give Pearse his rightful place in history.

The Museum of Transport and Technology of New Zealand hails him as the "first man to 'fly' a mechanically powered aeroplane". The museum said his achievements were more remarkable because, unlike the Wright brothers who employed engineers and were sponsored by the US, he financed and built the plane himself.

In Waitohi, the town 200 miles south of Christchurch where Pearse first flew, they are planning a parade next March. But according to his great-great niece Debbi Gardiner, he died alone in 1953, "disenchanted" that word of his flight did not reach the outside world.