New Delhi: The world's first parachute jump on October 22, 1797 was celebrated today by search engine Google by posting an interactive animated doodle on its home page featuring a man wearing a hat taking off and then jumping from a height, waving his hat.
On that day, French aeronaut André-Jacques Garnerin became the first person to make a parachute jump.
He used a silk parachute and jumped from a height of 3,200 feet and five years later he bettered it with a jump from 8,000 feet .
The word 'parachute' comes from the French prefix paracete, meaning to protect against fall.
