As we have all learned from class, plenty of people were attempting flight long before the Wright Brothers. One of these men was Pierre Desforges, a French clergyman. He, like most wannabe aviators before him thought that birds had the key to flying.
Therefore, he decided to build a set of wings, but not being confident enough to use them himself, he attached them to a peasant and covered the peasant in feathers. He then told the peasant to jump off a tower and flap his arms, promising that it would work. Luckily, the peasant refused to commit suicide, so Pierre Desforges first attempt at flight ended in failure.
One failure, however, would not stop him, so two years later he came back with his new flying machine, a gondola covered by a canopy and with wings attached. He got the help of some peasants to carry the flying machine to the top of a tower and throw him off. As I'm sure most of you guessed by now, he went straight down and crashed. Lucky for him, he was relatively unhurt with just a broken arm.
The really interesting part of the story, however, comes in the form of a quip from an onlooker, Baron Von Grimm i.e. although Desforges wouldn't be burned as a sorcerer, "the idea of the gondola would be likely to lead him straight to the madhouse."
Moral of the story: If you want to succeed at something, make sure it's allowed, or be thankful that you failed.
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