Competing Claims
Some claim that the hot air balloon was invented some 74 years earlier by the Brazilian Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão. A description of his invention was published in 1709 in Vienna, and another one that was lost was found in the Vatican in about 1917. However, this claim is not generally recognized by aviation historians outside the Portuguese-speaking community, in particular the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
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Famous quotes containing the words competing and/or claims:
“The first wrote, Wine is the strongest. The second wrote, The king is strongest. The third wrote, Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory.”
—Apocrypha. 1 Esdras, 3:10-12.
Referring to “three young men” of the bodyguard of Darius, king of the Persians, competing for his favor.
“Though an unpleasant sort of person, and even a queer threatener withal, yet, if one meets him, one must get along with him as one can; for his ignorance is extreme. And what under heaven indeed should such a phantasm as Death know, for all that the Appearance tacitly claims to be somebody that knows much?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)