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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking a little bit about the history of aviation.

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Speaker 1: But it's not going to be Amelia Earhart or Charles

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Speaker 1: Lindberg or the Wright Brothers. It's going to be something

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Speaker 1: a little less illustrious. And those are some bungled attempts

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Speaker 1: at one person flight. And I know when I was little,

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Speaker 1: I genuinely thought that I could fly if I just

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Speaker 1: concentrated hard enough. I did too. I actually took it

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Speaker 1: one step further and took flying lessons when I was

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Speaker 1: in kindergarten, And looking back, I always thought it was

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Speaker 1: the difference between being five years old and six years old.

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Speaker 1: And my friend was kind of putting me on about

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Speaker 1: teaching me how to fly. But we talked about it

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Speaker 1: recently and she said she knew she couldn't fly, but

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Speaker 1: she honestly believed that if she coached me enough, I

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Speaker 1: might be able to. Well, I'm glad your attempts went

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Speaker 1: a little bit better than some of the other ones

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Speaker 1: on our list. Yeah, I'm glad we learned earlier that

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Speaker 1: flying is not easy unless you're in a plane or something.

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Speaker 1: Unlike the story of Daedalus and Icarus from Ovid's Metamorphoses,

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Speaker 1: Datals was an inventor and for himself and his son

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Speaker 1: he need wings that of wax and feathers so they

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Speaker 1: could escape from the island of crete. But Dadalis warned

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Speaker 1: Agris not to go too close to the sun or

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Speaker 1: the wax would melt. But he did, and he fell

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Speaker 1: into the ocean and perished. And that idea of building

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Speaker 1: wings with feathers, that feathers were the real key to flight,

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Speaker 1: and that the bird wing was like the perfect form

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Speaker 1: to fly with, really is a theme through all of

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Speaker 1: these bungled attempts. People can't let go of the idea

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Speaker 1: that feathers are would make you fly. And that brings

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Speaker 1: us to the story of al Jawari, who lived in Nissaba,

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Speaker 1: Arabia around one thousand a d. He was a Turkish

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Speaker 1: scholar from for Rob and sometime between one thousand two

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Speaker 1: and one thousand ten, he tied two pieces of wood

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Speaker 1: to his arms and jumped from a mosque in Nissubbar

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Speaker 1: And as you'll see in a lot of these stories.

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Speaker 1: He did it in front of a crowd and had

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Speaker 1: a very dramatic pronouncement before he jumped. Oh, people, no

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Speaker 1: one has made this discovery before. Now I will fly

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Speaker 1: before your very eyes. The most important thing on earth

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Speaker 1: is to fly to the skies. That I will do now.

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Speaker 1: But he didn't. He fell and was killed. And flight

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Speaker 1: was pretty interesting to Islamic scholars during the Middle Ages,

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Speaker 1: and it was even a sacred ideal to the turk

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Speaker 1: something um that was seriously discussed in the Middle East

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Speaker 1: long before Europe. Even around the thirteenth century. The Turkish

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Speaker 1: lyric poet Sultan Valid included the word ug mock I

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Speaker 1: think I'm sitting there right, I'm not sure in his poems,

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Speaker 1: which meant both heaven and to fly. So that obsession

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Speaker 1: with flight is pretty pretty early. But there were other

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Speaker 1: countries that had a long obsession with flight. Portugal was

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Speaker 1: one of them. Um. The Portuguese Air Club was formed

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Speaker 1: in nineteen o nine, and there was a Portuguese Air

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Speaker 1: Museum that came into being what just six years after

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Speaker 1: the right brother right, And that brings us to our

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Speaker 1: next person. Juo Torto. Torto was a nurse barber, bleeder, healer, astrologer,

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Speaker 1: and teacher, but he wanted to add a personal flyer

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Speaker 1: to that list. Didn't work out so well. He built

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Speaker 1: some calico cloth covered wings and to really complete the picture,

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Speaker 1: put on an eagle shaped helmet and um. On June

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Speaker 1: at five pm, precisely, he jumps from the cathedral tower

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Speaker 1: of Sant Matias Square and falls to the chapel. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: the helmet slipped, he can't see where he's going, and

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Speaker 1: he's fatally wounded in front of the crowd that's come

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Speaker 1: to see his flight. Another renaissance man who met with

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Speaker 1: a better fate, I'd say it was be Leonardo da Vinci,

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Speaker 1: and that might be because he didn't actually try to fly,

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Speaker 1: or at least we're not sure he did. He did, however,

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Speaker 1: invent a contraption for flight right, the complex ornithopter, and

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Speaker 1: he drew these very detailed pictures of it, but no

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Speaker 1: one sure if he if he did build the model

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Speaker 1: or test it at all. One of Leonardo's associates, Cardanis,

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Speaker 1: wrote in fifteen fifty that Leonardo had tried quotes in

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Speaker 1: vain to get this ornithopter to fly, but it hadn't worked.

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Speaker 1: So perhaps there were a few not so successful attempts.

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Speaker 1: Leonardo is pretty famous for designing all these amazing machines though,

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Speaker 1: and not actually seeing them through. That's why we can

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Speaker 1: still build them today and find out what they were

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Speaker 1: really like. Right, We've got another article I now and

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Speaker 1: him and whether or not he built it primitive version

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Speaker 1: of the car that John Fuller also wrote, which I

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Speaker 1: had encourage you to check out. One of Leonardo's contemporaries

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Speaker 1: did actually get off the ground, though, Giovanni Battista Dante,

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Speaker 1: who was an Italian mathematician. He glued feathers to his arms,

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Speaker 1: um so the standard model of personal flight, and just

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Speaker 1: flaps and he's got trial flights at Lake Tasmino, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't go so well and he has a violent

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Speaker 1: crash on the roof of St. Mary's Church. But there's

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Speaker 1: another renaissance man who's about one hundred years after these two,

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Speaker 1: and he's still stuck on this bird's wing theory, thinking

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Speaker 1: he can make it work. So he made wings out

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Speaker 1: of whalebone, of course, covering them with feathers because they

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Speaker 1: knew that had something to do with the flight thing,

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Speaker 1: and made them into a curved sort of shape with springs,

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Speaker 1: and he did make a bit of a flight. It

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Speaker 1: lasted about four hundred yards and then he fell through

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Speaker 1: a roof and broke his legs. That was pale. Oh

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Speaker 1: good Otti, So yeah, the Renaissance Italian attempts aren't particularly illustrious.

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Speaker 1: I think he decided that he'd stick to painting from

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Speaker 1: then on. So now we'll go across the Channel to

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Speaker 1: a man named John Williams, who turned out to be

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Speaker 1: the Archbishop of York, And like Sarah and I, as

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Speaker 1: a child, John Williams was convinced that he could fly.

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Speaker 1: This is in fifteen eighty nine, so I guess it

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Speaker 1: was every child's dream even then. But he actually jumps

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Speaker 1: from the walls of Conway Castle in Wales into the sea.

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Speaker 1: He's walking along and is so taken by the idea

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Speaker 1: that if he jumps he can fly place. He's wearing

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Speaker 1: a really long coat and he hopes that the coat

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Speaker 1: will billow out, I guess, like some sort of parachute um. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: he falls on the rocks and is injured in a

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Speaker 1: very unfortunate way because he was castrated. Although they wrote

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Speaker 1: it a bit more delicately in the Renaissance John Hackett

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Speaker 1: wrote that falling on the stone caused a secret infirmity

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Speaker 1: fitter to be understood than further described. Our next story

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Speaker 1: comes from France, but it is just a story. It's

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Speaker 1: a moral tale about the dangers of flight, and it

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Speaker 1: was written by a man named Philippe Lepicard, who wrote

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Speaker 1: about a laborer who was known for his drinking, and

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Speaker 1: then one day, when he had too much to drink,

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Speaker 1: he decided to make himself a flying apparatus. He cuts

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Speaker 1: a winnowing basket in half and uh fashion some wings

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Speaker 1: out of those, But then he decides that to look

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Speaker 1: and act more like a bird, to really be the bird,

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Speaker 1: he needs a tail, so he uses a shovel and

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Speaker 1: kind of sticks it behind his pants and jumps off

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Speaker 1: a pear tree with this contraption and ends up breaking

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Speaker 1: a shoulder where you know. Then from then on he

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Speaker 1: can't he can't continue on his drunken inventions and doesn't

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Speaker 1: work out. And this is a sixteenth century story, But

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Speaker 1: flight had been somewhat of a moral issue for quite

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Speaker 1: a while in the eighteenth century in France. There were

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Speaker 1: even proposed laws that would details strict control over how

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Speaker 1: flying machines could be used and could be built. People

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Speaker 1: were worried about criminal misuse of flight, that you could

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Speaker 1: go places you weren't supposed to go at a time,

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Speaker 1: you know, when walls were a pretty big deal. And

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Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century a man named Johann Daniel Major

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Speaker 1: wrote about a world I'm quoting from John's article in

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Speaker 1: which treachery, robbery, and assassination would be heaped upon one another.

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Speaker 1: Towns and castles, whole provinces and kingdoms would presumably soon

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Speaker 1: be obliged to fill the air, either by means of

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Speaker 1: the frequent firing of cannon or by stirring uprising smoke

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Speaker 1: to protect themselves against total invasion. But that premonition didn't

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Speaker 1: bother Benny the Locksmith, also from France, back in sixteen

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Speaker 1: seventy eight. He's an interesting case of somebody who lives

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Speaker 1: a life totally separate it from flight. You know, he's

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Speaker 1: not always pursuing building these contraptions, but just one day

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Speaker 1: wakes up and decides, I am going to fly. Benny

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Speaker 1: It designs an apparatus made of two wooden rods placed

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Speaker 1: on the shoulders, and each has two wings attached to them. Now,

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Speaker 1: the rods also tie onto the pilot's feet and you

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Speaker 1: can kind of flap. This is a good thing to

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Speaker 1: go to the article and actually check out the picture

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Speaker 1: of this, because it's pretty hard to to visualize if

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Speaker 1: you're not actually seeing it, and when you look at it,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't It looks like a big mess of sticks

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Speaker 1: with some paper attached. It doesn't look like it would work.

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Speaker 1: But it's actually better than most of these attempts. Um

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Speaker 1: he's able to jump from low heights. He doesn't try

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Speaker 1: to just start flapping from the ground, but he's able

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Speaker 1: to jump from low heights first chairs and tables, and

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Speaker 1: then then a little bit higher and he can He's

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Speaker 1: actually okay at gliding down to the ground smoothly. Long

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Speaker 1: attempts at flight, however, don't work out. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I would have been satisfied with just a little glide

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Speaker 1: when I was a little maybe, just not like a

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Speaker 1: violent crash and a broken leg or death. Which brings

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Speaker 1: us to the Marquis de back Ville, who one day

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Speaker 1: just again woke up and decided that today was the

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Speaker 1: day he was going to fly, despite the fact that

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Speaker 1: he had it appears no interest in aviation up until

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Speaker 1: this time. That was just his day, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: he was going to fly from one side of the

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Speaker 1: sun to the other. He wanted to leave from his

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Speaker 1: mansion in Paris and fly about five hundred to six

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Speaker 1: hundred feet to land in the Tuilerie. And he gathers

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Speaker 1: a large crowd on this you know day, they always

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Speaker 1: like that too. Yes, what you want to show what everybody?

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Speaker 1: You're going to accomplish this flight. And he had again

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Speaker 1: large wings that looked a lot like paddles that he

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Speaker 1: had on both his hand and his feet. He looks

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Speaker 1: kind of like a human ping pong paddle. Actually looks ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: And he jumped from a terrace on his mansion, starts

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Speaker 1: to float toward the garden and he's going to make

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Speaker 1: exactly Everyone thinks, oh, he's going to make it, and

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Speaker 1: then he kind of starts wavering back and forth and

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Speaker 1: then slams into the deck of a barge and breaks

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Speaker 1: his leg. And that was his one and only attempt

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Speaker 1: at flight. Our final Frenchman is the Abbe Pierre Deforge,

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Speaker 1: who was a French clergyman born about seventeen twenty three,

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Speaker 1: and he was a pretty controversial figure in his lifetime.

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Speaker 1: He was imprisoned in the best Deal for almost a

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Speaker 1: year because he believed that Catholic priests and bishop should

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Speaker 1: be allowed to marry. That's the kind of thing that's

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Speaker 1: going to get you into trouble. Um. But he's he's

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Speaker 1: basically seen by the authorities as somebody who's eccentric but

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Speaker 1: essentially harmless. And I like his tactic towards this whole

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Speaker 1: flying thing, because I'm sure he'd heard about these other

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Speaker 1: failed attempts. And so the abbe makes some wings, but

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Speaker 1: instead of trying them at himself, he tries to convince

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Speaker 1: someone else to do it for him. Handy peasant, Yes, peasants,

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Speaker 1: they are so handy. He covers this peasant in feathers

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Speaker 1: from head to toe, leads him up to a belfry,

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Speaker 1: and then he tells him, you know, you should really

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Speaker 1: just start flapping farms, and then you should just throw

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Speaker 1: yourself out into the air. It's totally going to work. Um.

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Speaker 1: The peasant, probably the best declines, and so instead, deforaged

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Speaker 1: decides he'd like to make a real flying machine, and

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Speaker 1: he needs to get up some money and some time

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Speaker 1: and set himself to doing that. Yeah, before he had

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Speaker 1: been studying the mating habits of swallows in prison, so

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Speaker 1: I guess that's where he was stuck on the feather

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Speaker 1: and bird idea. But his next attempt is is, you know,

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Speaker 1: like you said, more of a flying machine. It's a

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Speaker 1: six ft long gondola covered by a canopy and attached

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Speaker 1: with wings which have a wingspan of twenty ft. So

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Speaker 1: that sounds a little bit more promising, but also a

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Speaker 1: lot heavier. So the abbe this time gets four peasants

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Speaker 1: not to to do the deed for him, but to

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Speaker 1: to push him off the tower he's gonna jump from.

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Speaker 1: This is my favorite line from John's article. So this

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Speaker 1: time defourge was the one flying, as he most likely

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Speaker 1: assumed that word had spread among the peasants to look

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Speaker 1: out for any clergyman seeking aid near heights. So, in

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Speaker 1: front of a large crowd, the peasants push him over

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Speaker 1: the edge and plunk, you know, he falls straight to

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Speaker 1: the ground. And he does okay, he's not crushed or

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Speaker 1: smashed on the castrated or castrated. He breaks an arm

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Speaker 1: um and and that's the end of his flying career.

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Speaker 1: But the crowd is beyond unimpressed. One of the onlookers,

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Speaker 1: Baron von Grimm, said that, you know, they weren't going

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Speaker 1: to burn him as a sourcer or anything, but this

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Speaker 1: flying contraption was enough for them to put him in

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Speaker 1: the madhouse. And our final somewhat madman is King Bladud,

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Speaker 1: who reportedly lived around but we should say King Bladud

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Speaker 1: is probably doably a legendary figure, even though he might

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Speaker 1: have had a contemporary counterpart. And I would like to

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Speaker 1: interject here that he is now rivaling our affections with

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Speaker 1: Jubatu for favorite historical names. Yeah, he's he's up there

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Speaker 1: for sure. So the mythical King la Dud was practiced

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Speaker 1: in necromancy, or communication with the spirits of the dead,

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Speaker 1: and so he used this this power to build a

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Speaker 1: pair of wings that he attached to his arms, and

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Speaker 1: he made a flight attempt, jumping from the Temple of

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Speaker 1: Apollo while wearing his wings. Unfortunately, the spirits didn't really

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Speaker 1: give him the right idea for how to build wings,

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Speaker 1: and he falls to his death. And after he falls,

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Speaker 1: supposedly he was buried in New Troy and succeeded by

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Speaker 1: his son Lear. And if that name sounds familiar, think

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Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's King Lear, because that was who was based

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Speaker 1: on this sy Leer was so upset exactly And on

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Speaker 1: an interesting side note, Bladud didn't isn't just known for

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Speaker 1: this a bungle flight attempt. Supposedly he also discovered the

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Speaker 1: healing springs of Bath, England with his pigs, and because

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Speaker 1: of that there are a hundred model pigs placed around

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Speaker 1: Bath in two thousand and eight to honor him. So,

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Speaker 1: if Sarah and I decide to make any more flight attempts,

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Speaker 1: we're going to head to Heartsfield Jackson and we're not

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Speaker 1: going to put feathers on our arms. We're going to

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Speaker 1: get a peasant to do it for us. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: think that it's the lesson from from this podcast, And

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Speaker 1: if you'd like to read more about the stories we've

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Speaker 1: just told, check out the article top ten bungled attempts

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Speaker 1: at one person flight by John Fuller from our Stuff

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Speaker 1: from the B Side podcast on our home page at

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Speaker 1: www dot house stuff works dot com. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com and be sure to check out the stuff

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Speaker 1: you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot Com home page. B do Believe