Oh come on.
Did they say that about the first guy who jumped out of a perfectly fine airplane with nothing but a nylon bed sheet?
Or how about the first guy to lick the back of a toad to find out you could get high?
...or the 12 year old who jumped off the roof with an umbrella? (me)
The first guys to do this used linen or silk sheets. Nylon hadn't been invented yet.
1785, believe it or not. Well, technically these guys were jumping out of balloons, not airplanes.