And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: November 12, 1859, 158 years ago today … a day for defying gravity. For that was the day Jules Leotard performed the world's first flying trapeze act ...

Jules Leotard was born in Toulouse, where his father was a gymnastics teacher who also ran a swimming pool. The young Leotard practised in his father's gym, and became expert on the parallel bars.

The look created by a 19th-century trapeze artist – equal parts athleticism and sex appeal – is still flying high today In May 1861, a new act at the Alhambra theatre in Leicester Square was the talk ...

HE may have flown through the air with the greatest of ease, but he did no favours for the great mass of humanity. HE may have flown through the air with the greatest of ease, but he did no favours ...

In this era of yoga pants, it’s easy to forget the leotard—early active-wear that required the confidence of a naked emperor. Named after Jules Léotard, a 19th-century French acrobat (and a man), the ...

IT was the fashion climax to the whole sweat-slicked, muscle-thumping show -- Madonna on all fours, crawling cheetah-like down the stage in lustrous Lycra, with those thundering thighs and that winged ...