[angmo]

Apparently drawing a picture and building a toy model counts as “almost developed”.

[fso301]

Guy could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he first put pen to paper and did some rudimentary power to weight calculations.

[exDemMom]

It looks like early flying machine inventors thought that the same processes that move vehicles through water would work to move vehicles through air. That highlights just how inventive the Wright brothers were when they came up with a fixed wing craft. Yes, they had contemporaries with similar ideas, but they were first to make it work.

[RoosterRedux]

Apparently this inventor had never jumped off a roof with an umbrella like most kids.

Weight matters.

[BuffaloJack]

The confederates might not have been successful with a helicopter, but they did make a missile. If memory serves me, the confederate missile used alcohol for fuel, was launched at Washington, but impacted in a vacant lot on the city outskirts after a 15 or 20 mile flight. Additionally, the explosives failed to detonate.

[LeoWindhorse]

If only….

[Bull Snipe]

The Confederates were unable to build a single locomotive during the Civil War.
How would they have been able to build that contraption.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

There was no way in Hell that a helicopter was going to be “almost” invented until a powerful, relatively light weight motor was invented.

[eartick]

Hell of a post hole digger. Four different augers to choose from.

[teeman8r]

Perhaps we should build a large wooden badger...

[keat]

What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?

[Crucial]

Before their fall, apparently Rome was close to developing a rudimentary steam engine. That would have been interesting.

[lurk]

It just has to go by the F-4 Phantom rule: if you put a big enough motor on it, it can fly.

[Rinnwald]

William C. Powers was an architectural engineer...

Well, there's your problem right there.

But the CH-47 Chinook proves even a building can fly with generous applications of T55 turboprops.

[Fresh Wind]

The Nazis almost developed flying saucers.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Union won the Civil War because its industrial economy overpowered the largely agricultural Confederacy.

Always annoying when I read that. People always leave out the fact that the Union had 4 to 5 times the population to call upon for soldiers than did the South, and that doesn't include all the newly arriving Irish pressed into service by the Union.

Manpower wins infantry engagements. The North had manpower, the South did not.

Equal manpower resources, and the South would have won quickly and decisively.

[CodeJockey]

You'd never learn about this at the University of North Carolina (UNC). They're too busy trying to rewrite civil war history.

[jmacusa]

“What ‘cha’ got thar Jeb? Looks like one ‘o’ them thar new fangled hell-e-copters!’’ "Yes indeede Luke, ain't she purrty? Gonna whip the Yankees with it! Just gotta figure how I'ma gonna get off the ground''.

[gnarledmaw]

You should look into airships of the 1800s and a group called NYMZA. Not as much of a stretch as many may imagine.

[Red Badger]

I have one of those in my kitchen.

It makes mounds of coleslaw....................