Oxford Bookworms Factfiles Stage 1 400 Headwords Flight Author:Michael Dean Three thousand years ago, Icarus tried - and died. One thousand years ago, Oliver of Malmesbury tried - and nearly died. Five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci tried - but his plane was too heavy. And finally, in 1903 the Wright brothers tried - and flew for fifty-nine seconds. Today, we think nothing of flying thousands of kilometres, but the... more » fight for flight has been long and dangerous.« less