Lagari Hasan Çelebi was an Ottoman Turk who according to legend was the first person to have made a successful manned rocket flight.
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Legendary Flight
According to an account given by Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century, Lagari Hasan Çelebi launched in a rocket from Sarayburnu, the point below Topkapı Palace. The flight was said to be undertaken at the time of the birth of Sultan Murad IV's daughter, in 1633. Lagari proclaimed before launch that he would "speak with Jesus in the heavens". Following ascension, Lagari reportedly descended by wing into the Bosporus. He was rewarded by the Sultan with gold and the rank of sipahi.
Evliya Çelebi also wrote of Lagari's brother, Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi, making a flight by glider a year earlier.
Popular culture
İstanbul Kanatlarımın Altında (Istanbul Under My Wings, 1996) is a film about the lives of Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi, his brother Lagari Hasan Çelebi, and the Ottoman society in the early 17th century, during the reign of Murad IV, as witnessed and narrated by Evliya Çelebi.
This legend was tested (and busted) on the TV show, MythBusters, on November 11, 2009 in the episode "Crash and Burn".
See also
- Evliya Çelebi
- Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi, brother
- Inventions in the Muslim world
- List of Turks
- Timeline of science and technology in the Islamic world
Notes
References
- Evliya Çelebi (2003). Seyahatname. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, p. 318.
- Winter, Frank H. (1992). "Who First Flew in a Rocket?", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 45 (July 1992), pp. 275-80.
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