50 Fun Facts About Kites

Which two 5th-century BC Chinese philosophers are credited with inventing the kite?

Their wooden kites were called muyuan. Silk sails, silk line and bamboo frames were all readily available in ancient China.

The modern Chinese word for kite, fengzheng, is named after what?

By the Tang dynasty, bamboo flutes and whistles were tied to kites so they would sing. Vietnamese kites still fly tailless with small flutes attached.

Which traveller first brought stories of kites to Europe at the end of the 13th century?

Actual kites arrived later, carried home by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The English word 'kite' comes from the name of what?

Kites of the genus Milvus hang almost motionless in the wind while hunting, just like the toy.

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin published a kite experiment to prove what?

A metal house key hung from the wet hemp line; a dry silk cord let Franklin hold it safely from an open shed. His son William reportedly helped.

What object did Franklin tie to the end of his kite string to draw off the charge?

He had borrowed it from a friend, Benjamin Loxley. A Frenchman, Thomas-François Dalibard, had already drawn lightning with an iron rod a month earlier.

Who invented the box kite in 1893?

The English-born Australian was trying to build a manned flying machine and never patented anything, calling patent fees 'much wasted money'.

On 12 November 1894, Hargrave lifted himself off a beach under a train of how many box kites?

He rose about 16 feet at Stanwell Park, south of Sydney, which is now Australia's best-known hang-gliding site.

On 27 July 1899 the Wright brothers tested which key flight-control idea with a biplane kite?

Twisting the wings to roll the aircraft was the control breakthrough that earlier glider pioneers like Lilienthal and Pilcher had lacked.

Which British Army man-lifter was developed by a Wild West showman?

Samuel Franklin Cody's winged box kites hauled lookouts aloft. Baden-Powell's Levitor was shipped to the Boer War but arrived after the fighting ended.

Which telephone pioneer experimented with very large man-lifting tetrahedral kites?

Bell's cellular kites were built from thousands of tiny tetrahedral frames. The Wright brothers and Hargrave also built man-lifters.

The flexible Rogallo wing, later used for hang gliders, was invented in 1948 by a NASA engineer and whom?

Francis and Gertrude Rogallo called it the Parawing. NASA considered it for landing Gemini capsules before choosing ordinary parachutes in 1964.

Which kite design was adapted for parachuting and paragliding?

Its ram-air cells inflate in flight with no rigid frame. The Rogallo wing, by contrast, became the stunt kite and hang glider.

According to the Samguk Sagi, how did general Kim Yu-sin use fire in 647?

He launched burning kites to rally his troops, and the blaze in the sky also terrified the rebels. Nearly a thousand years later Admiral Yi signalled his fleet with kites.

Which Korean admiral commanded his navy with kites during the Japanese invasions of 1592–1598?

Yi Sun-sin's turtle ships are better remembered, but different kite patterns relayed his orders across the fleet.

Which Chinese city calls itself the kite capital of the world?

It hosts the largest kite museum in the world, and the Weifang International Kite Festival runs every April 20–25.

China's first international kite festival in 1984 got help from a kite association based where?

David Checkley of the Seattle Kite Association helped stage it on April 1, 1984. Four years later the festival formally declared Weifang the Kite Capital.

Manja, the string used for kite fighting in South Asia, is cotton thread coated with what?

Rice glue or tree gum binds the abrasive to the thread. Injuries from the razor-like line have led to bans in parts of Pakistan.

In kite fighting, what are the children who chase down cut-loose kites called?

A cut kite belongs to nobody until someone claims it, which gave Khaled Hosseini's novel and the 2007 film their title.

In Afghanistan, kite flying is known in Dari by what name?

The Taliban banned it along with many other recreations. Patang is the Hindi-Urdu word for a fighter kite.

Basant, the Punjabi kite festival patronised by Mughal emperors, marks the start of which season?

It falls on the fifth day of Magh, in late January or early February, and was celebrated at the Lahore Fort.

Gujarat's huge kite-flying festival Uttarayan coincides with which Hindu harvest festival?

It marks the Sun's move into Capricorn around January 14. Vadodara, Surat and Ahmedabad host a three-day international kite festival beforehand.

The wau bulan, an intricately decorated traditional kite, comes from which country?

The 'moon kite' is flown in Kelantan. A related design, the wau kucing or cat kite, is the basis of Malaysia Airlines' logo.

Which airline's logo is based on the wau kucing, a traditional cat-shaped kite?

Malaysian kites also carry a row of gourds with sound slots that whistle as they fly.

The Bali Kite Festival is held each July on which beach?

It takes place in the Padang Galak area. Balinese kites carry large bows on the front that produce a deep throbbing hum.

The bebean, the largest traditional Balinese festival kite, is shaped like what?

It has a broad mouth and split tail. The janggan is bird-shaped and the pecukan leaf-shaped; the three are flown by competing village teams.

The Hamamatsu Kite Festival in Japan began as a way to celebrate what?

More than 100 kites fly over the Nakatajima Sand Dunes every May 3–5. Families still launch a kite bearing a new child's name.

In Japan, kite flying is a traditional children's pastime at New Year and which other holiday?

Japanese fighter kites include the six-sided rokkaku, whose name simply means 'six corners'.

In Bermuda and Guyana, kites are traditionally flown at which Christian festival?

Bermudians say the kites symbolise Christ's ascent. In Guyana, school children are taken to parks to fly them in the weeks beforehand.

In Chile, kites are especially popular during the festivities for which national day, September 18?

The Chilean volantín is a small paper fighter kite. Chile and Brazil are among the few countries outside Asia with strong kite-fighting traditions.

Vietnamese kites are flown without tails. What is attached instead?

The wind passing through the flutes makes the kite hum a tune, echoing the singing kites of Tang-dynasty China.

Kite knowledge spread across Polynesia as far as which country?

Anthropologists study Polynesian kite traditions for clues about early Asian practices, assuming the knowledge travelled from China with the people.

The first kite aerial photos (1887–88) were taken by Douglas Archibald and which Frenchman?

Batut shot his from Labruguière. Kite cameras later recorded the ruins of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

Which inventor promoted the kite-drawn buggy in Britain in 1827?

His 'charvolant' carriages were pulled along roads by kites. Commercial kite buggies did not appear until the late 1970s.

Which French brothers patented the inflatable kite design behind modern kitesurfing in 1987?

Bruno and Dominique's 1997 'Wipika' kite, with preformed inflatable tubes, made relaunching from the water practical and kicked off the boom.

Formula Kite was chosen by World Sailing for which Olympic Games?

Kitesurfing had briefly been announced for Rio 2016 in place of windsurfing before the decision was reversed. It featured at the 2018 Youth Olympics.

Roughly how many kitesurfers are there worldwide?

The industry sells around 100,000 to 150,000 kites a year. The sport went mainstream around the turn of the century.

A large kite built to pull its user along is called what kind of kite?

Also called a traction kite, it comes in two main forms: the soft ram-air foil and the leading-edge inflatable.

How many control lines does a standard dual-line sport kite use?

The pilot steers by adding and releasing tension on the left and right lines. Quad-line kites use a pair of handles with two lines each.

A kite is officially described as a tethered craft that is what, relative to air?

Unlike a balloon, a kite stays up only because air moving over its surfaces creates lift, with low pressure above and high pressure below.

What is the set of lines that attaches the flying line to a kite and sets its angle called?

Some designs skip it entirely; a box kite can fly from a single attachment point. The tail helps steady the face of the kite to the wind.

Most kite altitude records are held by which type of kite?

They fly Dacron sails on Spectra cable. The single-kite record, set by Robert Moore's team in 2014, used a triangular-box delta on 300-pound Dyneema line.

Dyneema and Spectra kite lines are made from which material?

They are stronger and lighter than Kevlar for the same diameter and resist UV degradation far better.

The Dyneema and Spectra lines used for record kite flights are made of which material?

The world's biggest kites are inflatable single-line designs with no rigid frame at all.

In geometry, a kite is a quadrilateral with reflection symmetry across what?

That gives it two equal angles and two pairs of adjacent equal sides. Mathematicians also call the shape a deltoid.

Let's Go Fly a Kite is a song from which 1964 Disney film?

The Sherman brothers wrote it as the film's joyful finale, with Mr Banks mending his children's kite.

Which Japanese fighter kite takes its name from the words for 'six corners'?

The hexagonal rokkaku is a favourite for team 'battles' at Western kite festivals, where flyers try to knock each other's kites out of the sky.

The Malaysian Kite Museum is in which historic city?

Japan, the UK, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and the US also have kite museums, but the largest is in Weifang, China.

Paper kites, popular from the Han dynasty onward, were known by what Chinese name?

Paper kites became popular in the Han dynasty. Texts also describe kites measuring distances, testing the wind and lifting men.

The Red Bull Kite Fight, an organised kite-fighting competition, has run since 2015 in which region?

Modern fighter kites often swap bamboo for fibreglass or carbon-fibre spines while keeping the classic flattened diamond shape.