Otto Lilienthal

Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making the idea of heavier-than-air aircraft a reality. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical.

23 May 1848

Born on the same birth day (23 May): Amaldus Nielsen • Artie Shaw • Edward Norton Lorenz • Epitácio Pessoa • Ezequiel Schelotto • Franz Mesmer • George Osborne • Guinevere Turner • James Pradier • Jeralean Talley • Joshua Lederberg • Kevork Ajemian • Lena Meyer-Landrut • Lorenzo Sawyer • Luís Roberto Alves • Manolo Sanchís • Paul Augustin Mayer • Paul Siefert • Ross Wallace • S. Donald Stookey • Sebastián Fernández (footballer, born 1985)

Born in the same month (May 1848): Adelsteen Normann • Carl Wernicke • Fritz von Uhde • Henry Edward Armstrong • Johann Baptist Singenberger • Viktor Vasnetsov