Da Vinci Died Nearly 500 Years Ago Today.

I'd have made this post in 2019, but if the totally-not-ridiculous Mayan and Gregorian calendar prophecies are to be believed, we'll all be dead by then.

A few days ago, this happened:

A parachute designed by Leonardo da Vinci more than 500 years ago has been used successfully for the first time by a Swiss base-jumper.

Olivier Vietti-Teppa said the Renaissance genius's design, which consisted of four equilateral triangles forming a pyramid and featured in a text dating from 1485, helped him make "the perfect jump".

The 36-year-old Swiss amateur parachutist said he jumped from a hovering helicopter at 650 metres (2,130 feet) on Saturday and the Leonardo parachute deployed as planned at 600 metres above a Geneva airport.

"I came down... smack in the middle of the tarmac at Payerne military airport," he said. "A perfect jump."

He is the first person to make it safely to the ground using the da Vinci model - Britain’s Adrian Nicholas was forced to pull the ripcord on a modern back-up version to complete his descent safely in 2000.