PETRÓPOLIS, Brazil — Who invented the airplane? Questions don’t get much simpler. But in Brazil and the United States, the answer you’ll get isn’t likely to be the same. In 1903, U.S. schoolchildren ...

The creative yet debt-ridden inventor Fred must sell his beloved prototype of an aeroplane. Fred’s wife is ill and needs expensive medicine. The buyer is the usurer Frank, who doesn’t understand ...

The label on the aircraft displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., read: “The first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight. Invented, ...