Without islam and its influence on learning during the medieval period, there would have been no renaissance in Europe, and europe would have remained in the dark ages for quite a while longer. quite a few muslims that i have met have also been ignorant of this fact, which slightly baffles me.

The ninth century Muslim Berber inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas covered his body with vulture feathers and 'flew faster than a phoenix" according to a contemporary poem. Despite a lack of contemporary accounts and the similarity to Icarus, it is still considered by John Harding to be the first attempt at heavier-than-air flight in aviation history.

Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari (died ca. 10031010), a Muslim Kazakh Turkic scholar from Farab, attempted to fly using two wooden wings and a rope. He leapt from the roof of a mosque in Nishapur and fell to his death.