Geez Wiira, you reading the paper at 0130 in the morning??!!
From the Richard Pearse website: "Wild and inaccurate statements have been publicised from time to time concerning Richard Pearse's achievements in the field of aviation. However. no responsible researcher has ever claimed that he achieved fully controlled flight before the Wright brothers, or indeed at any time. To attain fully controlled flight a pilot would have to be able to get his plane into the air, fly it on a chosen course and land it at a predetermined destination.
Obviously Pearse's short "hops" or "flights", whilst they established the fact that he could readily become airborne, did not come within this category, but neither, for that matter, did the first powered flights of the Wright brothers in December 1903. The Wright brothers, however, had the resources necessary to continue their experimentation until they achieved fully controlled flight."
On a related yankism, I note with interest that the Scientific American called the wings "aeroplanes". Maybe it was the Wrights that came to an "agreement" about changing them to "airfoils" too! Those pesky Wrights!