Attempt at Human Bird-Like Flight

John Childs is the very first person to fly in America. He did it in 1757, on September 13th, from the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston. This is the same church from which Sarah Palin hung some lanterns to direct Michel Bachmann on her ride to Concord New Hampshire to warn the British that we were "Not going to take it any more."

Childs tied himself to a glider made of bird feathers, and he did it a three times in a row, firing off guns the third time, but he caused such a distraction that he got banned from doing it again. Based on the description of the event, Childs was really ziplining more than flying, but that's cool too. Ziplining was invented in Boston in 1757!

And all of that was a LOT more interesting than the more recent bird-like flight, in which a guy in the Neatherlands made wings, and flew by flapping them around like a bird.

Or did he ....

The man who claimed to achieve bird-like flight with a custom-built contraption came clean today: It was a hoax 8 months in the making.

Netherlands artist Floris Kaayk, who went by the name of Jarno Smeets during his "Human Birdwings" project, admitted to the hoax today on a Dutch television program called "De Wereld Draait Door" ("The World is Turning").

"My name is Floris Kaayk I'm actually a filmmaker and animator. I am now 8 months working on an experiment about online media," Kaayk told the show, according to a Dutch-to-English translation in a YouTube video.

The YouTube Video originally put up by Kaayk was since taken down by Kaayk.

What a loser. Childs would not have taken down his YouTube video.