DECEMBER 17

1903 - Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful controlled flight in a powered aircraft, the Wright "Flyer", on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They made four flights in all, the longest lasting almost a minute.

2004 - The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan banned tobacco sales and smoking in public, the first country in the world to do so.

2010 - Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself alight in Tunis, becoming the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring.