January 3: In efforts to interest the U.S. government in the use of airplanes for the military, Wilbur Wright speaks to Congressman Robert M. Nevin, who asks him to prepare a letter for submission to the secretary of war that Nevin would deliver and endorse. The army declines the offer.

March 10: The French lawyer and aspiring aeronaut Ernest Archdeacon sends a letter to the Wright brothers in Dayton, Ohio challenging them to prove the validity of their claims. This marks the beginning of a bitter contest between the Wrights and European aeronauts.

March 16: S. H. Maloney, a professional balloon-parachute jumper, makes a first successful glide to earth in a tandem-wing glider built by John J. Montgomery (1858-1911), a professor at Santa Clara College in California.

April 27: Under the supervision of Samuel F. Cody, Sappy Moreton of the British Army’s Balloon Section reaches 2,600 feet beneath a mancarrying kite in Aldershot, England.

April 29: In Santa Clara, California, Daniel Maloney is launched from a tethered balloon to make a free flight in a tandem-wing glider, which “Professor” Montgomery, a schoolteacher and keen amateur aviator, has designed.

May 25: Ferdinand Ferber makes his first aerial tests in Chalais-Meodon, France with his No.6 bis glider fitted with a 12-hp Peugeot motor.

June 8: Gabriel Voisin succeeds in lifting off from the river Seine in his box-kite glider when towed by a motorboat.

June 23: Wilbur and Orville Wright make their first flight of 1905 in Huffman Prairie, Ohio, in their new Flyer III, the first practical airplane in history.

September 6: Orville Wright made two flights in the 1905 Machine in Huffman Prarie, Dayton, Ohio. The flights were made around a 3/4 mile oval track and demonstrated Orville's skill at banking the aircraft and landing.

October 5: Wilbur Wright in the Flyer II makes the 1st flight of over a half-an-hour at Simms Station, Ohio.

November 30: The Aero Club of America is established in New York City.

December 30: The Wright brothers sign a contract for one million francs with Frenchman Arnold Fordyce for the sale of a powered flying machine capable of flying a nonstop distance of 31 mi. When contingent of French government officials come to Dayton in April 1906 to change the agreement by seeking exclusivity for one year, the idea is dropped; for their trouble, the Wrights received 25,000 francs (then about US $5,000), the first money they earn from flying.