27th March: Fly a Kite Day

Today is Fly A Kite Day. So here are ten facts about kites:

1. The first kites were flown in China in the 5th-century BC. Chinese philosophers Mozi (also Mo Di) and Lu Ban (also Gongshu Ban) were said to have invented them. These first kites were made from silk with Bamboo frames.
2. Marco Polo arrived back from his travels towards the end of the 13th century with tales of kites. Actual kites were brought back to Europe by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries.
3. Kites have had numerous uses throughout the centuries, including measuring distances, fishing, testing the wind, lifting men, signalling, and communication.
4. Kites fly because air flows over the surface producing low pressure above and high pressure below. This same principle, known as "lift" is the reason aeroplanes can fly. In fact, the Wright Brothers used to experiment with kites prior to building their flying machine.
5. The principle of lift applies in liquids as well as in air - so there are such things as underwater kites. They are being developed to harvest renewable power from the flow of water.
6. In 1750 Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning was caused by electricity by flying a kite in a storm. Although he is famous for this experiment, it's not known whether he ever actually tried it. Scientists did make use of kites in the 19th century though, for such purposes as meteorology, aeronautics, wireless communications and photography.
7. In Asian countries, kite flying is often kite fighting, where the purpose it to cut other kites down. Participants may pass their kite strings through ground glass and glue to make the strings abrasive. Kite fighting in Kabul is most famously depicted in Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner. Kite flying was one of the many recreations banned by those miserable killjoys, the Taliban.
8. In some countries, wind pipes and flutes are attached to kites so they play a tune when flown.
9. The World record for the highest kite was set on September 23, 2014. A team of four flew a 120 square feet (11 m2) kite to 16,009 feet (4,880 m) above ground level. The biggest-ever kite flown for at least 20 minutes was a kite with lifting area of 10,971 square feet (1,019 m2).
10. Weifang, Shandong, China is the kite capital of the world. The largest kite museum in the world is there. The museum has thousands of kites in a display area of 87,188 square feet (8,100 m2). Weifang also hosts an annual international kite festival on large salt flats south of the city.