Otto Lilienthal was a German engineer who was born in 1848.  He was the innovator of the first successful glider.  Later in the century, the Wright brothers were greatly influenced and inspired by Lilienthal's work.  Attempts to create airplanes and gliders were few and far between before 1881.  Otto Lilienthal changed that.  He developed eighteen different models of his gliders, fifteen monoplanes and three biplanes, over a span of five years.  These models were hang gliders, controlled by a pilot who shifted his weight rather than using active control surfaces.  Lilienthal's first glider was tailless, a little more than a pair of wings.  He tested this model by jumping off a board.  As his models got more and more serious, he built an artificial conical hill at Lichterfelde, near Berlin in order to launch his gliders into the wind no matter which direction it was coming from.  Nothing could keep Lilienthal on the ground, not even his dissapointing results.  By 1896, Lilienthal was ready to attempt powered flight.  He had built a glider with flapping wing tips, powered by a small motor.  On August 9, 1896, Lilienthal was ready to test this powered glider.  Unfortunately, the glider stalled and crashed to the ground, fatally injuring Lilienthal.  He died a day later in a Berlin hospital, but not before logging over 2,500 successful flights in his lifetime.  Otto Lilienthal made the ultimate sacrifice and paved the way for air travel as we know it today.
 
 

References:
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/WrBr/inventors/Lilienthal.html
http://aviation-history.com/early/lilienthal.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/25486/english/pioneers/lilienthal.shtml
http://www.flyingmachines.org/lilthl.html