interesting facts
01 Myth of a Human Flight
Icarus & Jamshid (Ancient Persia) were the first myths of a human flight
02 First Legends
More credible stories about first human flights were: - of Archytas of Tarentum (428–347 BC) - Abbas Ibn Firnas (810–887) - Eilmer of Malmesbury (11th century) - winged flight - hot-air Passarola of Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão (1685–1724).
03 Era of "Modern" Flights
November 21, 1783 - the date when the Montgolfier brothers took off in a hot air balloon. But it only went downwind. So they had to invent steering (dirigible in French). Jean-Pierre Blanchard flew the first human-steered dirigible in 1784 and crossed the English Channel in 1785. In 1799 an Englishman, Sir George Cayley set the concept of the modern airplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. Early dirigible developments included machine-powered propulsion (Henri Giffard, 1852), rigid frames (David Schwarz, 1896), and improved speed and maneuverability (Alberto Santos-Dumont, 1901). Dirigibles stayed in use for quite a while, ceasing to exist after the Hindenburg tragedy. Many of the dirigibles, especially Zeppellin-body-styled ones - "the airships" were used in luxury aviation but also in combat. In 1915 England was the first to witness the bombing power of a Zeppellin. Pula was also under a Zeppellin surveillance, and Ljubljana was bombed by aircrafts and Zeppellins during WW1.
04 The First Airplane
Although there were many claims prior to Wright Brothers, December 17, 1903 is the date we remember as the first official airplane flight. Previous flights were gliders (control but no power) or free flight (power but no control), but the Wright brothers combined both, setting the new standard in aviation records. It was built to connect people, but only 10 years after it was commericalised as one of the fierce new weapons which was designed to do everything but to connect people.
