Albert Berry

The idea of parachutes had been around a long time, with the original credit going to either the Chinese or to Leonardo da Vinci, but the first man to ever jump out of an airplane with a parachute is U.S. Army Captain Albert Berry, who jumped over Missouri in March of 1912. Though some have held that Grant Morton performed the same feat in 1911 off the coast of California, the skydiving community commonly gives credit to Berry.