Which Windswept Aviation Pioneer Is Your Soulmate?

Congratulations! Your soulmate is the bad boy of failed 19th century French aviators.

In 1890, Clement Ader became the first person take off from level ground in a powered aircraft. He rose about a foot in the air and traveled 165 feet—more of a hop than a flight. He got lucky. A real takeoff in Ader’s bizarre, steam-powered flying machine almost certainly would’ve killed him.

An electric engineer by training, Ader ignored previous attempts at plane design. He didn’t start out with gliders or models. Instead, he trapped large birds using chloroform-soaked mice and studied their woozy attempts to fly away. He snuck into Algeria disguised as an Arab so he could watch vultures. In the end, he fashioned his contraption after a bat. It was nearly impossible to control.

Ader predicted that aviation would be the future of military power, but the French government pulled his funding when he couldn’t make it work. He filed unsubstantiated claims of a longer hop, and in the end bitterly burned most of his plans.

You’ve got to love this guy’s passion, if not his limited understanding of aerodynamics.

Heyooo, double trouble! You’re bound by fate to Wilbur and Orville Wright, two adorable nerds you might’ve seen on a license plate.

In 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in a powered aircraft. It lasted 59 seconds, soaring for 852 feet over the dunes at Kitty Hawk, NC.

These guys were the cutest. They started a newspaper and a bicycle shop together. Their dad was a bishop. Wilbur cancelled his plans to go to Yale to care for his sick mom—and because he was badly shaken up in an ice hockey accident. Awww!

The Wrights pursued flight studiously. They read everything they could on the subject, including specially requested pamphlets from the Smithsonian. They tested 50 model wings in their homemade wind tunnel, and calculated performance exactly before building their planes.

At first the press was skeptical—rather than major newspapers, a local beekeeping journal covered their early exploits. But in 1908, the Wrights became European celebrities as they toured the continent demonstrating their plane and hobnobbing with royalty. Even then, they felt shy about all the attention and just wanted to get back to work.

You’re sure to have a long, happy life with these sweet Midwestern boys. And they got along swimmingly, so it won’t be weird at all.

You did it, you got Amelia! Get ready for a life of devil-may-care adventure—this self-proclaimed “hobo of the air” did what she wanted, when she wanted.

Amelia Earhart captured the world’s hearts in 1928, as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Though she was a passenger on that first trip, four years later she became the second person to make a solo transatlantic flight. In 1935 she thrilled in her record-breaking solo flight across the Pacific. Then she disappeared forever in 1937.

Before getting recruited (basically as a publicity gimmick) for her career-making 1928 flight, she’d been a social worker, a nurse, a teacher, a photographer, a gravel-hauler, and an air rodeo performer. Once Earhart was famous, she endorsed cars, motor oil, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Kodak film, malted milk, tomato juice, Amelia Earhart signature luggage, and her own line of “active clothes” for the modern woman.

Earhart lectured regularly at colleges about women’s empowerment. She gave her husband/manager a letter on their wedding day that said, in part, “I cannot guarantee to endure at all the confinements of even an attractive cage.”

When she vanished during her attempt to circumnavigate the equator—even though people had already flown around the world six times—some folks criticized the Navy for spending tons of money looking for the victim of a self-promoting “stunt.” But even FDR agreed that stunt would’ve been pretty sweet: he authorized the search for his personal friend until it seemed absolutely hopeless.

You landed a good one in Amelia Earhart. Just try to keep up.

Oh. Hm. Don’t worry, it’ll maybe be okay. Just think of Charles Lindbergh as a golden boy with issues. Like Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club, except a Nazi sympathizer.

In 1927, Lucky Lindy (aka Slim aka Plucky aka The Lone Eagle) made the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic. His plane, “The Spirit of Saint Louis,” took off from New York City, and 33 ½ hours later he landed in Paris—an instant celebrity.

Lindbergh was the handsome son of a congressman, who married the daughter of an ambassador and made her his literal co-pilot. He helped a invent a perfusion pump (a method for keeping organs alive outside the body)an artificial heart with a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon. He won a Pulitzer for his memoir. He weathered unspeakable tragedy when his two-year-old son was kidnapped and subsequently found dead amidst a media frenzy.

But then there was all the Hitler stuff. Visiting Nazi Germany several times between 1936 and 1938, he was very impressed with their aviation capabilities and accepted a Luftwaffe medal. When he returned home, Lindbergh lobbied for the U.S. to stay out of WWII. He figured the Nazis had it in the bag. He also said that “racial strength is vital,” and made anti-semitic statements.

Then amidst public backlash—and against FDR’s orders—Lindbergh still flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific. To confuse things even further, he later crusaded for the environment and on behalf of humpback whales.

So . . . Lindbergh sort of had his moments? Good luck, sorry.

Wooooooo YEAH! Your soulmate is Lagâri Hasan Çelebi. He’s a 17th century Turkish aviator, he’s possibly fictitious, and he loves to bang.

There’s only one account of Çelebi’s courageous flight, sometime around 1623. On the one hand, it comes from a chronicle most historians credit as pretty reliable. On the other hand, it’s ridiculous.

It all came down to impressing a sultan. Murad IV was enjoying a fireworks display to celebrate his daughter’s birth, when Çelebi upped the ante. The inventor approached a rocket loaded with 54 pounds of gunpowder and climbed aboard inside a wire cage. Then he called a buddy over to light the fuse.

Çelebi launched almost 1,000 feet in the air before the gunpowder ran out, whereupon he unfolded seven glider wings and coasted smoothly back down to the palace. Or into a river. It’s important to keep these facts exact. He returned to the sultan, saying, “Your Majesty, prophet Jesus sends his greetings to you.” Then he got a fat pouch of gold.

Sounds like you and Çelebi will have a . . . blast . . . together. ALSO POSSIBLE: This guy never existed, and you’ll die alone.