Gui Boratto - Flying Practice
Romario Alves died in 1879 when he leapt from the Sugarloaf Mountain into the Guanabara Bay. He was wearing two fully feathered wings at the time of his death. It was discovered later that he had spent the previous 18 months meticulously building the wings, the support struts of which were made from carved balsa wood. The feathers on the wings included vaned and down feathers from over twenty-five different species of bird, including, incredibly, a contour feather from a Haast's Eagle, which had been extinct at that point for more than 400 years. Romario Alves is regarded in Brazil as one of the pioneers of flight.[Buy III]