Eilmer of Malmesbury - The Flying Monk
Eilmer of Malmesbury (also known as Oliver due to a scribe's miscopying, or Elmer, or Æthelmær) was an 11th-century English Benedictine monk of Malmesbury Abbey who wrote on astronomy. All that is known of him is from the Gesta regum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Kings), written by the eminent medieval historian William of Malmesbury in about 1125. Being a fellow monk of the same abbey, William almost certainly obtained his account directly from people who knew Eilmer when he was an old man.
William records that, in Eilmer's youth, he had read and believed the Greek myth of Daedalus and studied the contributions of the Islamic Golden Age, including Abbas ibn Firnas's flight. Thus, Eilmer fixed wings to his hands and feet and launched himself from the top of a tower at Malmesbury Abbey:
"He was a man learned for those times, of ripe old age, and in his early youth had hazarded a deed of remarkable boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze upon the summit of a tower, flew for more than a furlong [201 metres]. But agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by the awareness of his rash attempt, he fell, broke both his legs and was lame ever after. He used to relate as the cause of his failure, his forgetting to provide himself a tail."
Though the path of his flight is unclear, to have travelled a full furlong (660 ft) he would likely have had to remain airborne for approximately 15 seconds.