Modern Living: They Wanted Wings

Kenneth Piper last April became the first man to fly from Twickenham Bridge into the Thames. It was not much of a flight, actually—about 40 feet, straight down—but the fact that Piper was borne by homemade wings gave it an added dimension of pathos. Walter Cornelius (the "Birdman of Peterborough") can identify only too well with Piper's plunge; in December he zoomed from a supermarket roof straight into the River Nene, because, as he later complained, "the elastic broke on my wings."

Both Piper and Cornelius belong to a flock of Britons fascinated by...

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