I've never been into ancestor worship.
The Wrights did many important things, but the first flight was not among them. The first powered flight, maybe. The first powered controlled flight, probably. Whitehead probably flew, but with only two axis control, it's probably not accurate to call that controlled flight.
The first aviators were the Montgolfier brothers, more than 100 years prior. The first heavier than air flight probably was Lilienthal's, some 30 years before the Wrights, in a weight-shift glider.
History is rich enough that we don't need to cling to the stories we were told as kids. Quite a number of those are simplified or even outright fabricated. Remember the old saw about George Washington and the cherry tree? How about Newton and the apple? Neither of those happened.
The truth is, the Wrights were fabulous engineers, but to make them first requires several qualifications. That they might or might not be first does not lessen that. The first to do something is not always the best. Quite the contrary. Edison's electrical generator was probably not practical on any but the smallest scales, for instance. Even the Wright Flyer wasn't all that good -- and the 1904 one was really bad (it was pitch-unstable!).
The Fox headline is, well, Fox. The Wrights do not have to be the only participants to be "in history." They certainly were not alone. And one can argue that Santos-Dumont, not the Wrights, invented the aviation industry. And the Wrights tried to end it with a patent lawsuit.
History is very often uglier and more complex than the kids stories. That does not make it less important. Quite the opposite.
