47 Fun Facts About Kites

In Peanuts, whose kites always end up in the Kite-Eating Tree?

Charlie Brown. In a 1977 storyline he finally took an angry bite out of the tree, then ran away from home when the Environmental Protection Agency came after him for it.

Fengzheng, the modern Chinese word for kite, is said to describe which feature of early kites?

Their sound in the wind. Fengzheng joins 'wind' with zheng, a zither: the word once named chimes hung under eaves, and is said to have passed to kites because of the noise they made aloft.

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

Marco Polo. He described a custom of sending a man up on a kite before a ship sailed and reading its flight as an omen of whether the voyage would prosper.

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

A hovering bird of prey. The toy took the bird's name in the 1660s because it hangs in the air the same way; the bird's own Old English name, cyta, probably imitated its cry.

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

That lightning is electricity. Contrary to legend, no bolt ever struck the kite, which would probably have killed him: it simply gathered charge from the storm clouds overhead.

What object did Benjamin Franklin tie to the string of his famous 1752 kite?

A metal house key. The kite itself was a large silk handkerchief stretched on a cedar cross, because silk stands up to the wet and wind of a storm far better than an ordinary kite would.

Which kite, invented in Australia by Lawrence Hargrave in 1893, became the model for the wings of Europe's first aeroplanes?

The box kite. Hargrave refused to patent it, calling patent fees 'much wasted money', because he wanted other experimenters to be free to build on his work.

In 1894 Lawrence Hargrave tethered four of his kites to a beach to do what?

Lift himself. Moored by piano wire, the kites raised him almost 16 feet above Stanwell Park beach, which showed they were steady enough to carry a person.

In 1899 the Wright brothers built a biplane kite to test which key flight-control idea?

Wing warping. Four lines to the kite's corners let the brothers twist its wings from the ground, the way a soaring bird banks, and the same idea went on to steer their first aeroplanes.

Which man-lifting kite of the British Army was developed by a Wild West showman?

The Cody kite. Samuel Cody, born Cowdery, claimed to be Buffalo Bill's son but was no relation at all, and his man-lifting kites were good enough for the Army to take him on.

Which inventor spent years building giant man-lifting kites out of thousands of tetrahedral cells?

Alexander Graham Bell. He chose the pyramid-shaped cell because any number can be joined into a kite of almost any size without the sticks having to get any thicker or stronger.

Francis and Gertrude Rogallo's flexible kite wing, turned down by NASA for landing Gemini capsules, went on to launch which sport?

Hang gliding. Unable to find official backing, the couple sold their wing as a five-dollar toy kite, and its simple shape later inspired the builders of the first modern hang gliders.

Which kite design is the ancestor of the steerable, wing-shaped canopies used by skydivers?

The parafoil. Domina Jalbert's 1964 design has no rigid parts at all: the wind rams into its open fabric cells and inflates them into the curved shape of a wing.

In 647 the Korean general Kim Yu-sin sent a burning kite into the sky to convince his troops of what?

A fallen star had risen. The chronicle Samguk Sagi tells that his men took a falling star as an omen of defeat, so he sent fire up on a kite, let it be known the star had gone back, and beat the rebels.

In World War II, US Navy gunners trained by shooting at steerable kites printed with the outline of what?

An enemy aircraft. Kite expert Paul Garber's diamond could loop, dive and climb like a real fighter, and hundreds of thousands were shot to pieces in gunnery training.

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

Weifang. Local tradition makes the Shandong city the birthplace of the kite, and its international festival each April draws kite fliers from around the world.

Airmen adrift at sea in World War II flew a folding kite from their life raft to raise what?

A radio aerial. The hand-cranked 'Gibson Girl' rescue transmitter, nicknamed for its hourglass shape, sent its distress call up the kite's own flying line, which doubled as the antenna.

Manja, the cutting line of South Asian kite fighting, is traditionally cotton thread coated with what?

Powdered glass. Fliers saw at each other's lines until one kite is cut free, and the string is sharp enough to kill: Delhi moved to ban it in 2016 after three deaths.

In kite fighting, what are the people who chase down kites that have been cut loose called?

Runners. By custom whoever catches a cut kite gets to keep it, so crowds race after the best ones, and Khaled Hosseini named his 2003 novel The Kite Runner after the role.

Gudiparan bazi is kite fighting in which country, where it was outlawed from 1996 to 2001?

Afghanistan. The Taliban called kite flying un-Islamic and would beat anyone caught at it and tear up the kite, yet the fighters were back in the skies over Kabul once the regime fell.

Basant, the Punjabi kite festival long centred on Lahore, marks the start of which season?

Spring. Lahore banned the festival in 2007 after years of deaths blamed on kite fighting, and a generation grew up without it before the kites came back in February 2026.

Gujarat's huge kite festival Uttarayan falls on which Hindu harvest festival each January?

Makar Sankranti. It marks the Sun's passage into Capricorn and the start of the harvest season, and kite sales across India peak as families take to the rooftops to duel.

Which Central American country marks All Saints' Day, 1 November, by flying giant hand-made kites?

Guatemala. Teams in Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez spend months building and decorating the kites, then fly them to carry messages between the living and their ancestors.

Which airline's tail logo is a stylised wau, a traditional kite of its home country?

Malaysia Airlines. Its wau bulan, or moon kite, was restyled in red and blue in 1987; a 2012 redesign turned the kite all blue, but the airline later went back to both colours.

In 1848 a boy's kite carried the first line for a suspension bridge across which gorge?

Niagara Gorge. Homan Walsh flew his kite from the Canadian side, and its string was tied to a tree and used to haul ever stronger cords across until the builders could pull over a cable.

Islanders in the Pacific and Southeast Asia have long flown kites made of leaves out over the sea to do what?

Catch fish. Leaf kites trailing baited lines are so old in the Pacific and Southeast Asia that some scholars think the kite was invented there independently of China.

Japan's Hamamatsu Kite Festival is said to have begun as a way to celebrate what?

The birth of a first son. Legend has a castle lord's heir honoured with a kite more than 460 years ago, and families still send up a giant kite painted with the name of each new baby.

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

The Boys' Festival in May. The holiday was renamed Children's Day in 1948 so that it would honour girls as well, but the kites and carp streamers still go up every 5 May.

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

Easter. The soaring kites are said to stand for Christ rising, and in both places they are flown at almost no other time of year.

In which South American country do kites called volantines fill the sky during independence celebrations each September?

Chile. The 18 September holidays come as the weather warms and the winds pick up, which has made them the traditional time of year for flying, and fighting, kites.

What do traditional Vietnamese kites, which fly without tails, carry instead?

Small flutes. Cut from bamboo and fixed across the kite, they turn the breeze into music, humming a tune for as long as the kite stays up.

Until aircraft took over in the early 1930s, which US agency flew kites to raise its recording instruments?

The Weather Bureau. Its kite stations hauled recorders aloft on piano wire, but the kites were hard to handle in rain and gusts, and from 1931 regular aircraft flights did the job instead.

Which earthquake-ruined city did George Lawrence capture in a famous panorama taken by a camera hung from kites?

San Francisco. After the 1906 earthquake Lawrence sent a panoramic camera up on a train of kites and caught the whole ruined city, from high above the bay, in a single frame.

Which French brothers patented the inflatable kite design behind modern kitesurfing in the 1980s?

Legaignoux. Bruno and Dominique, from Brittany, put the idea on sale in 1997 as the Wipika kite, whose air-filled tubes let a rider relaunch it after it fell in the water.

Kiteboarding made its Olympic debut, in the Formula Kite class, at which Games?

Paris 2024. Sailing's rulers had voted kites into Rio 2016 in place of windsurfing, then reversed the decision within months, so the riders waited until Marseille to race for medals.

Flying a kite was once illegal in which US city, now home to one of the best-known American kite festivals?

Washington, D.C. Paul Garber of the Smithsonian lobbied Congress until the ban was lifted, and the kite festival he founded on the National Mall dates from 1967.

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

Power. Also known as a traction kite, it pulls hard enough to drag a rider along on a surfboard, a buggy or skis, which is why fliers are told to handle one with extreme caution.

What addition made Peter Powell's Stunter kite steerable?

A second line. Pulling on one side or the other steers the kite, and after it featured on the BBC's Nationwide, Powell's factories were turning out 75,000 a week at the peak.

In aviation terms, a kite is a tethered craft that is what, relative to air?

Heavier-than-air. A balloon floats, but a kite has to be held up by the wind pressing on its surfaces, the same aerodynamic force that carries an airliner.

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

The bridle. Sliding the point where the flying line joins it up or down changes the angle at which the kite meets the wind, and with it how high or low the kite will fly.

The general Han Xin is said to have flown a kite while planning an attack around 200 BC to measure what?

A tunnel's length. The story goes that the kite's line showed how far his men would have to dig to come up inside the walls.

Dyneema and Spectra kite lines are spun from an ultra-strong form of which carrier-bag plastic?

Polyethylene. Drawn out into fibres of very long, aligned molecules, it makes a line stronger and lighter than Kevlar for its thickness, which is why record-height kites fly on it.

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

A diagonal. Fold the shape along that line and the two halves match, which is why it has two pairs of equal sides side by side and why its diagonals always cross at right angles.

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

Mary Poppins. It closes the film: Mr Banks, who has finally put his family before the bank, mends his children's broken kite and takes them all to the park to fly it.

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

Rokkaku. Teams send the tall kites up to battle, tipping a rival's over or cutting its line, until only one is left in the sky.

Which Orthodox country opens Lent with Clean Monday, a public holiday of picnics and mass kite flying?

Greece. Families head out to the hills and beaches with lagana, a flatbread baked only for the day, and fill the sky with kites in an outing known as the Koulouma.

In 1749 two Scots made the first recorded scientific use of kites, sending a train of them up to measure what?

Air temperature. Alexander Wilson and his lodger, the student Thomas Melvill, took readings at several heights at once from kites flown one above another, three years before Franklin's famous experiment.