The flying Dutchman has turned out to be a lying Dutchman after human birdman Jarno Smeets confessed that his film showing him using a pair of wings to fly like a bird was in fact a hoax.
Mr Smeets, told a Dutch television programme on Thursday night that he was in fact the animator Floris Kaayk who had made the film as an experiment in how viral online media works.
He developed the video over an eight-month period not as a deliberate fake but as a way of “telling a story via a blog”.
“It’s about the dream so many people have,” he told the De Wereld Draait Door television show about the fantasy of flying unaided like a bird.
There have been an estimated nine million viewers of Mr Kaayk’s video despite scientific scepticism over the apparent successful test flight of a 17-metre wing suit contraption.
The NRC Handelsblad newspaper concluded today that: “The Flying Dutchman is now essentially proved to be the Lying Dutchman.”
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