
13/04/2025
In 875 CE, at the age of 65, ' ibn Firnās tried to . Using a hang-glider made of and that he built after hours of observing birds in , he leapt off the roof of the Rusāfa palace in Cordoba. By all accounts, he flew for several minutes, on the currents like a !
He is known as "the first man to ever fly", but other than that, he also designed a . He devised means of manufacturing glass, and he developed a chain of rings that could be used to display the motions of the and . He also devoloped a process for cutting rock . Thereafter, Spain no longer needed to export quarts to Egypt, but could finish it at home.
'Abbās Ibn Firnās was an polymath, an , , , , and an Arabic-language . You probably may have heard about the Wright brothers inventing the first motorized flying plane but truth is that centuries before them, this individual man invented it.