Six Injured After Amish Pilot Crashes Horse-Driven Airplane Into Ezekiel’s Barn

Lancaster County, PA - In what was deemed as the first horse-powered attempt at flight in the history of man, local Amish man Jebediah King's efforts ended in disaster. His craft had trouble leaving the ground and pummeled into Ezekiel Beiler's barn injuring Mr. King, Mr. Beiler and four others working in the haylofts at that time.

Sources within the Amish community have informed the media that King's efforts were several years in the making. After most of the Amish community had finished their meals, packed up their sewing kits and headed off to bed, King would sneak out to his barn in an effort to be the first person to achieve horse-powered flight. Using his furniture making tools, he ended up attaching wings, a rudder, and other flight control surfaces to his horse-drawn buggy.

Using older methods of aircraft manufacture handed down from the Amish community of centuries past, he was able to cut the weight of the lumber and fabric required down to about one metric ton. Due to King's third-grade education, he had not sufficiently mastered the art of the required mathematics necessary in order to estimate the lift, drag, thrust and gravitational requirements the aircraft would have to meet or overcome in order to make the first horse-powered flight. Instead, he used a smaller scale version of his model also retrofitted the same way and would launch it from atop the Church steeple (the highest point in Lancaster) in the middle of the night.

Measuring the distances traveled, he slowly modified the smaller model version until launches from atop the steeple reached an astounding distance measurement of 1.5 meters of controlled flight.

Unfortunately for King, during the conception of his work and while testing the model, he forgot to include miniature horses. Instead, he used his arm in a back and forth motion while yelling "Vroom! Vroom!" It's widely speculated this oversight in engineering is what led to the disaster of King's machine.

Yesterday afternoon, as King strapped his broad-brimmed black hat on and saddled up his prize horses, he shouted a single line from Psalms 65:33 "To him who rides the ancient skies above, who thunders with mighty voice," and cracked the whip.

The first horse-powered flight started off well and the wings of the buggy started to lift ever so slightly. As Bernoulli's principle took effect, the buggy began to jump and rise from the ground ever so slightly. However, as the upward force pulled on the reins of the carriage team, they veered to the right - straight into Ezekiel's barn.

King went flying, the horses were destroyed, and Beiler's claptrap barn began to sway on its weak foundation. Finally, with a huff and a puff from the winds blowing across the land, the barn collapsed with five others inside.

Thankfully, the world's first ambuggy was on the scene to cart off the wounded and injured to the Amish hospital. While there, the wounded found themselves nestled comfortably amongst rusty saws, forks, and knives from which the Amish performed surgery.

Jebediah Knight, once lauded as the only tinkerer and inventor in the countryside was publicly executed at the hands of angry Amish folks after his completely irresponsible venture into horse-powered flight.