February 4, 1912: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s the Flying Tailor

Born in Austria, Franz Reichelt moved to Paris in 1898 at the age of 19. There he went into business as a tailor, creating fashionable dresses for the many Austrians who visited Paris. He was quite successful at his chosen trade, but he yearned for something more. He had the mind of an inventor, and we all know what troubles that can get a person into.

As with many such dreamers in the early 20th century, he looked to the skies, which were now filled with magnificent men in their flying machines. Reichelt became obsessed with the idea of a tailor-made suit that would convert to a parachute should a hapless aviator leave his or her flying machine for some reason. Parachutes had been around for ages, but his would be sartorial as well as utilitarian.

He developed his garment and tested it on dummies dropped from his fifth floor apartment. (“Mon Dieu, here comes another falling dummy,” a Parisian pedestrian might be heard to remark.) These experiments were less than successful. What he needed was a higher perch from which to launch his dummies. A lesser man might have moved to a tenth floor apartment, but Reichelt saw the Eiffel Tower gleaming in the distance, a steel siren calling to him.

Reichelt somehow wheedled the Parisian Prefecture of Police to grant him permission to conduct a test from the tower. However, when he arrived at the tower on February 4, 1912, he was not accompanied by a dummy. It quickly became clear that he had duped them, that Reichelt himself would be the dummy. Despite all attempts to dissuade him, Reichelt, about to become known as the flying tailor, jumped from the tower platform, down to the icy ground below and into the history books. Charles Darwin strikes again.

Other Than the Previous One, That Is

In 1789, George Washington was elected president receiving 100% of the vote, the only president to ever do so.

Unfriended

On this day in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and fellow Harvard students launched Facebook.  It was limited to Harvard students only.  Alas, it did not remain that way.