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Kiwi Flight Before the Wright Brothers?
houseofmore writes "The Toronto Star is is reporting that New Zealander Richard Pearse may have very well made several flights beginning almost nine months before the Wright Brothers ever got off the ground. It also notes that "Mad Pearse's" machine was in some ways more advanced than the first Wright Flyer."
How about:
I'm not a racist but I play one on TV.
Is that a sure sign of being racist?
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
1 - NZ isn't in Africa. It's on Oceania, near Australia.
2 - Alberto Santos Dummont was the first man to really fly, in Paris. Before a heavy crowed park, winning an international prize for his feat. Also, his is the first DOCUMENTED flight, and his creations ( like flaps, for instance ) are the only ones used today in the modern aircraft industry.
Only the US credit the Wright Brothers for the invention of aircrafts, as the rest of the world credits Santos Dummont, who also invented the wrist watch ( which was first produced by Cartier and known as the Santos Dummont wrist watch ) and the shower:) All proofs of Dummonts work are now held in Paris ( Aerospace Museum I think ), and it was the first successfull documented airplane flight experiement, and the only one people base modern flight techniques on. Dummont went back to Brazil after the start of WWI, and when informed his creation was being used in the war, tried to commit suicide in the ship. After arriving, he led a reclusive live in Petropolis, Brazil, shattered by the idea of creating a weapon of great destruction. Thank God he didn't live to see a plane dropping the first nuclear bomb.
Sources? Take Scientific American for example, but it's something any kid in any country outside north america knows. Ask any Brazilian, french or ittalian kid for example. But if you still want to believe every important invention in the world was of american origin, just go ahead. It's almost Xmas anyway and you also probrably believe Santa will climb your roof and leave you a sock full of gifts:)
PS: This is not a direct answer to Anonymous Coward, but let's just drop the subject. A Brazilian priest is known of doing Radio experiments before Marconi, but he didn't invent it. Why? No documentations of the procedures, techniques and of the fact itself.