Ezekiel Airship

An early experimental aircraft, the Ezekiel Airship was the brainchild of a Mississippi-born Baptist minister named Burrell Cannon. Inspired by Ezekiel’s vision in the Book of Ezekiel, the craft was powered by a four-cylinder gasoline engine that drove four paddle wheels.

According to unverified claims, in 1902 (a year before the flight of the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina), the aircraft allegedly flew for a claimed distance of about 160 feet (50 m) in the presence of a few witnesses in Pittsburg, Texas. There is no documentation or physical evidence to support such a flight exists, and historians have not generally accepted the claim that the aircraft ever flew (although some believe it perhaps achieved uncontrolled flight).

The original aircraft was destroyed while being transported to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and in 1922 the original plans for the Ezekiel Airship were also destroyed, in a fire. A full-size replica of the aircraft was created in the 1980s, and after first being displayed at the Pittsburg Hot Links Restaurant, it was moved to the city’s Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum (where it remains to this day) in 2001.