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Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen - the "Red Baron" - during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S.Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company's exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs.