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Flying Contraptions

By William Lee

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Humans’ dreams of flight go back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, whose mythology tells of the inventor Daedalus escaping a wrathful monarch by fashioning wings from wax and feathers and flying away. (His better-known son Icarus was not so fortunate; he strayed too close to the sun, so that his wings melted, causing him to fall into the sea and drown.) It was the Wright brothers in 1903 who came up with the first powered, heavier-than-air machine that could fulfill that yearning, but even the ubiquitous modern success of the airplane hasn’t stopped other dreamers from experimenting with alternative methods of emulating the birds. Some of their inspirations have been ingenious, while others tend more toward the outlandish. Here is an assortment of personal flight technologies and the stories behind them.

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Flight of the Jet Man

NOT ALL FLIGHTS LAND SAFELY

Flying Objects