The ancient civilisations were interested in parachutes. There is record of the Chinese Emperor Shun using straw hats tied together to facilitate his escape from a burning tower. This may or may not be true. The story of a robber trying to evade capture has a ring of truth to it.
There is an account of a Chinese robber, something of a celebrity in his own right, who was trying to escape capture from the great Arab merchants' mosque in Canton, 1180 AD. He had in his possession the leg of a golden cockerel, the mosques greatest treasure.
Forced up to a high minaret with his loot, his only way to avoid capture was to jump. He did this holding two handleless umbrellas. He wrote: "After I jumped into the air the high wind kept them fully open, making them like wings for me, and so I reached the ground without injury.
For the earliest actual parachute an unknown Italian engineer's notebook of 1480 shows a conical parachute. This pre-dates the Leonardo da Vinci pyramid-shaped parachute of 1485.
There is an account of a Chinese robber, something of a celebrity in his own right, who was trying to escape capture from the great Arab merchants' mosque in Canton, 1180 AD. He had in his possession the leg of a golden cockerel, the mosques greatest treasure.
Forced up to a high minaret with his loot, his only way to avoid capture was to jump. He did this holding two handleless umbrellas. He wrote: "After I jumped into the air the high wind kept them fully open, making them like wings for me, and so I reached the ground without injury.
For the earliest actual parachute an unknown Italian engineer's notebook of 1480 shows a conical parachute. This pre-dates the Leonardo da Vinci pyramid-shaped parachute of 1485.
