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flight. He made an emergency landing in a cornfield and had to secure permission to cut a wide strip across the field to take off.
On October 11, 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt became the first President to fly. He was a passenger in a Wright airplane piloted by Arch Hoxsey at St. Louis. Knabenshue also took President Roosevelt up for a dirigible ride.
The famous week-long Belmont Park International Aviation Meet, the largest aerial meet held in America prior to World War I, began on October 22, 1910. It was a most important and exciting event, attended by thousands including America's top society. The world's most skilled airmen participated and included Orville Wright, Claude Grahame-White, Walter Brookins, Arch Hoxsey, Roland Garros, Hubert Latham, John B. Moisant, and many others. In the spot landing contest, the Wright airplanes, with their skids, had tremendous advantage over the wheeled airplanes. The Wrights demonstrated the world's first clip-wing racer at the Belmont. The Wright Model R, nicknamed the "Baby Grand," had a wing span of only 21 feet and a wing area of 140 square feet. It attained a speed of almost 70 miles an hour with a 60 horsepower engine.
The Belmonth meet was a great spectator success. Thousands of people's eyes were uplifted to the skies. The crowds were eruberant. Moft of them had never seen an aerial exhibition. To them, the skies belonged to the birds - in a real sense they were right. A two hundred foot fall in the "Baby Grant" caused by motor failure marred the exhibition being given by Walter Brookins and ended the holiday mood of the spectators. However, on October 31, Ralph Johnstone, fly-