Wilbur Wright

The face-smash that grounded Wilbur Wright into the airplane

Sam recounts how a bully (later a serial killer) smashed teenage Wilbur Wright in the face with a hockey stick, breaking his jaw and leaving him housebound for years. During that recovery he obsessed over bicycles and a toy glider, redirecting his life from Yale and medicine toward building a plane.

“And he thought that his life was over. And I love stories where you think it's all over. You have so much, uh, uh, adversity in front of you and that totally shifts the outcome. I had that one time when I got fired from a job when I moved out here, I had nothing. I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen. So I ended up starting my first company.”