João Torto

João de Almeida Torto was a Portuguese man, probably a legendary figure, who purportedly made an unsuccessful attempt at flight, jumping from the top of Viseu Cathedral with the aid of a self-designed flying apparatus on 20 June 1540.

[1] In June 1540, Torto, who worked as a nurse, barber surgeon, astrologer and schoolmaster, had a crier proclaim his intent to fly: "Know all ye, inhabitants of this city, that this month shall not end before you will see the wonder of wonders, a man who will fly with wings of cloth from the tower of the Cathedral to the Field of São Mateus — for whose person and holdings responds João de Almeida Torto".

A large crowd assembled in the Cathedral square at dawn on 20 June 1540, as João Torto used a rope and pulley to get the apparatus to the top of the tower and then proceeded to suit up.

[1] All information on the incident was published in local newspaper Comércio de Viseu in 1922 and, later, in O Século in 1927, reportedly drawing from unpublished ancient documents in the private collection of Fr.

Henrique Cid, parish priest of Santos Evos in the late 19th century, whose writings have been criticised by historians as fanciful fabrications; in the 1960s, local historian and archeologist Alexandre de Lucena e Vale referred to his papers as "literary trifles", with no precise or inequivocal mention of sources, and no mention of similar tales in contemporary authors.