FlightlessParrot, I totally agree with your comments about definitions like "practical"; any one person's definition of practical is virtually certain to rule out another's, and so the debate goes.
It could be argued that Louis Bleriot's 1909 flight from one country to another across open water was perhaps the first demonstration of a "practical" aeroplane, even though he had already made a longer non-international flight. Oddly, in my experience Bleriot is virtually unknown in USA.