CYPRIAN THE FLYING MONK
If you are interested in aerial navigation and would like to know more about it, you can find information in a lot of books that Jean Maria Le Brise (1812-72) was the first man who started the era of gliding.
However, there was a man in Slovakia who tried the same thing a hundred years before the brave Frenchman. That was Father Cyprian, a monk who lived in the Red Monastery (Červený Kláštor). In addition to his clerical duties, he collected herbs, examined them, cured people with them and also devoted himself to flying.
Father Cyprian (1724-1775) constructed a glider and flew from the “Three Crowns” hill over the Dunajec River. However, he was not acknowledged for his brave pioneering deed. On the contrary, the Church accused him of witchcraft; he was forbidden to fly; and “the first glider in the world” was burned in the garden of the “Red Monastery”.