The Airplane! Greatest Muslim invention ever??

[HenryBHough]

Powered flight?

You can get an argument from several sides. Wright Brothers? Lilienthal? Lyman Gilmore?

But how about un-powered flight?

Icarus and Daedalus-the-Greeks?

Leonardo da Vincithe-Italian, right?

Maybe not.

"The Islamic Museum of Australia have commissioned another community project called the Abbas ibn Firnas, the father of modern glider aviation. Based on the historical recollections of the famous 9th century Spanish inventor and scholar three Australian Muslim aerospace engineers banded together to recreate a scale model of the famous flying contraption."

Before Da Vinci Wright brothers it was Abbas ibn Firnas Art Culture Worldbulletin News

Read the whole story. It might explain why Muslims may have a propensity to blow up airliners - in righteous protest of their not having gotten proper credit for their invention!

But then, again, it might not.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

If inclined to believe religious books, there was powered flight mentioned in Hindu texts.

"Vimāna is a mythological flying palace or chariot described in Hindu texts and Sanskrit epics. The Pushpaka Vimana of the demon king Ravana is the most quoted example of a vimana. Vimanas are also found in Jain texts."
Vimana - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[whitehall]

They named a crater on the moon after Ibn Firnis. Maybe because Firnis's last gesture was when he mooned spectators as he jumped to his death wearing a cloak reinforced with sticks.

 

[konradv]

They named a crater on the moon after Ibn Firnis. Maybe because Firnis's last gesture was when he mooned spectators as he jumped to his death wearing a cloak reinforced with sticks.

Survived with minor injuries.

Abbas ibn Firnas - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia