The parachute

  Most people know that Leonardo da Vinci left sketches of the parachute, which was the first appearance of the idea in Europe. However, the Chinese seem to have invented the parachute and actually used it well over fifteen hundred years before Leonardo.
    The first textual evidence we have for this is in the famous Historical Records of China's greatest historian, Ssuma Ch'ien, which was completed about 90 BC. We can therefore safely consider the parachute as dating from at least the second century Bc. Ssuma Ch'ien had access to vast archives, and the fact that he attributed the parachute to such remote antiquity means that its origins may well have been some centuries before this time.
  As the story goes, the legendary hero, Emperor Shun, was fleeing from his father, who wanted to kill him. He took refuge in a large granary tower, and his father set light to it, hoping to burn him to death. But Shun tied a number of large conical straw hats together and jumped, using them as a parachute. From this we can assume that there was indeed a jump by someone and that over the years the tale became attached to a legendary episode in the life of Shun. There was a commentary on the story in the eighth century AD by Ssuma Chen (a different person from the historian just mentioned), who remarked that the hats acted like the wings of a bird, making Shun's body light and bringing him safely to the ground.
  Needham brings forward a medieval mention of the use of the parachute, from a book called Lacquer Table History by Yo K'o. This book was published in 1214 and recounts events witnessed at Canton in 1192. In Canton at that time there was a large Arab community of merchants, who had their own mosques, one of which had a 'grey cloud-piercing minaret like a pointed silver pen' with a spiral staircase inside. At the very top was a huge golden , which was missing one leg. The leg had been stolen in 1180 by a cunning thief who had escaped by parachute. The robber's own account is preserved, for he seems to have been something of a local hero. He describes the escape as follows: 'I descended by holding on to two umbrellas without handles. After I jumped into the air the high wind kept them fully open, making them like wings for me, and so I reached the ground without any injury.'
  We have documentary evidence that the first construction and use of a parachute in Europe was due to a report 'of a visitor to Thailand, who witnessed its use by Chinese and Siamese acrobats. The account was written by Simon de la Loubere, appointed Ambassador to Siam by King Louis XIV of France from 1687 to 1688. In his Historical Relation he wrote:

There dyed [died] one, some Years since, who leap'd from the Hoop, supporting himself only by two Umbrelia's, the hands of which were firmly fix'd to his Girdle; the Wind carry'd him accidentally sometimes to the Ground, sometimes on Trees or Houses, and sometimes into the River. He so exceedingly diverted the King of Siam, that this Prince had made him a great Lord; he had lodged him in the Palace, and had given him a great Title; or, as they say, a great Name.

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