Legend says the first Ottoman flyer was rewarded with a bag of gold — and then exiled.

1632

Sultan Murad IV supposedly decided that a man who could glide across the Bosphorus was too dangerous.

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The event

• Hezârfen's flight over the Bosphorusc. 1632 · Galata Tower, Istanbul. The traveller Evliya Çelebi wrote that the scholar Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi leapt from Galata Tower on artificial wings and glided across the Bosphorus to Üsküdar. Sultan Murad IV rewarded him, then exiled him as too dangerous. No other source confirms the story.

17th century

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