¡Quédate de piedra! Ep.5 Diego Marín Aguilera

On May 15, 1793, Marin, with the help of one of his sisters and his blacksmith, who had worked with him building the machine, all the while attesting to it's relative light weight, was able to get craft up to the highest reaches of the castle of Coruña del Conde. With the castle tower walls having been designed and constructed in the shape of a square, together with the width and strength of the stone blocks along the top of the walls, although one of the walls was missing, Marin was able to face his machine outward toward almost any direction --- even across the space of the missing wall. Having studied the flight of birds for years, applying a nearly innate second nature, when the winds turned to what he considered in his favor, facing his flyer into the wind, he signaled his assistants to launch the machine.

After an initial slight drop before the flapping of the wings and the wind under them kicked in, along with the natural and mechanical forward momentum, according to his launch crew, he climbed to a height of at least 20 feet above his original launch elevation. With the flapping wings keeping the craft aloft for a longer distance than what would be afforded by a typical downward glide angle, albeit only done so with Marin becoming more fatigued more quickly than he had anticipated. His flight continued out over the city, easily crossing high above the Arandilla River winding it's way through the fields well beyond the edge of the town. Even though tiring he continued to maintain a fairly high flight advantage considering the distance covered when one of the welded metal joints broke, in turn letting major metal parts loose and tangling up chains, all needed in the full operation of the mechanism, locking the wings in an nonflyable, noncontrollable, and unflappable angle. With that, still at fairly substantial height, but unable to glide it out, the flying machine dropped like a rock.

His crew, trying to keep up with him as much as possible during the flight was soon upon him. Marín was only slightly scratched and bruised with, except for a few flaying and missing parts scattered along the flight path from the point of the undoing of the weld, the main structure of the flying machine was for the most part, undamaged. However, it has been reported the blacksmith received the wrath of the pilot for failing to weld the joint properly.

So too, it has been reported that rather than receiving adulation and respect for his accomplishments from the locals, they turned against him, accusing him of being a lunatic and branding him a heretic. The townspeople, like some angry torch baring crowd raging against Dr. Frankenstein and the man he put together or created, they took the flying machine and dismantled and destroyed the whole thing right down to the very last nut and bolt. Disgraced and depressed Marin never attempted another flight, dying six years later at the age of 44.
http://the-wanderling.com/early_flyers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Mar%C3%ADn_Aguilera