Jean Baptiste Dante, a mathematician of Perugia, who lived in the
latter part of the fifteenth century, constructed artificial
wings, by means of which, when applied to thin bodies, men might
raise themselves off the ground into the air. It is recorded
that on many occasions he experimented with his wings on the Lake
Thrasymenus. These experiments, however, had a sad end. At a
fete, given for the celebration of the marriage of Bartholomew
d'Alvani, Dante, who must not be confounded with the poet, whose
flights were of quite another kind--offered to exhibit the wonder
of his wings to the people of Perugia. He managed to raise
himself to a great height, and flew above the square; but the
iron with which he moved one of his wings having been bent, he
fell upon the church of the Virgin, and broke his thigh.
A similar accident befell a learned English Benedictine Oliver of
Malmesbury. This ecclesiastic was considered gifted with the
power of foretelling events; but, like other similarly
circumstanced, he does not seem to have beer able to divine the
fate which awaited himself. He constructed wings after the model
of those which according to Ovid, Daedalus made use of. These he
attached to his arms and his feet, and, thus furnished, he threw
himself from the height of a tower.
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