"They go up diddley up-up, they go down diddley down-down …" So goes the classic
song from the 1965 flim "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines," a comedy about a fictional 1910 aviation contest to fly from London to Paris.
The early inventors and aviators who dreamed that people could fly made many painful mistakes, but their vision, perseverance and faith — a lot of faith, really — led in time to modern aircraft and the aerospace technologies that have opened up the skies for exploration. Here are 8 of the wackiest flying machines from the very earliest days of aviation, most of which were actually able to get off the ground, at least briefly — unlike the elegant, but flightless, French "Marquis' Multiplane" of 1908, shown above. https://www.livescience.com/56410-wackiest-early-flying-machines.html
