Daedalus is too many words. I'll call him Daed.

So, Daed was this genius inventor. He was probably smarter than Albert Einstein.  Sorry, Albert.

Since he'd been exiled from Athens for killing his own nephew, he was in the employ of Minos, the king of Crete, a small but powerful island-nation in the Mediterranean. While in Crete, he had one son, Icarus. I don't know who his mother was.

Unfortunately, things for Daed in Crete had taken a sharp nosedive. Minos's wife, a woman named Pasiphaë, had fallen in love with a bull (very long and gross story), and now Minos was stuck with a half-bull, half-human son on his hands. The kid grew massive and developed a taste for human flesh. His name was the Minotaur, the 'bull of Minos'. Cruel.

So, Minos was running out of places to hide this monster and stop him from gobbling up his citizens. So he had Daed construct a giant maze underneath the royal palace, and there he threw the Minotaur. After Crete conquered Athens, Minos made the Athenians send him a tribute in the form of several of their best young men and woman to be fed to the monster in the Labyrinth.

Of course, one of those young men, Theseus, the prince of Athens, would kill the Minotaur. After the monster's death, Minos was furious with Daed. Why? Because the only reason Theseus was able to succeed was because Minos's own daughter, Ariadne, had fallen in love with Theseus (so classic) and helped him navigate the maze. After, Theseus took both Ariadne and her sister with him back to Athens. (Actually, Ariadne ended up stranded on another island, Naxos, where the god Dionysus found her and made her his immortal wife)

So what did that have to do with Daed? He was the only one who knew how to navigate the Labyrinth. He was also Ariadne's tutor. She had begged him for a way to navigate the maze so Theseus wouldn't die. He gave her a magical spool of thread that would allow the user to find their way back from the maze. When Minos found out that Daed had helped Theseus, he locked Daed in his own Labyrinth workshop, where he was to stay until he died. His son Icarus was imprisoned in the palace, and only allowed to see his father a few times a month.

Naturally, Daed invented a way out. Even if he and Icarus managed to sneak out of the Labyrinth, all ways off the island were monitored closely by Minos.

Daed made two sets of wings out of bronze feathers and wax holding the contraption together. When Icarus came to visit him, he used melted wax to stick the wings to his son's shoulder blades after Icarus did the same to him. Icarus kicked open an air vent exposing the sky above, and with some flapping and gusts of wind, the two took off as soon as the palace guards came to take Icarus back to his prison.

Kids, do not try this at home. It won't work and you will look very stupid.

The two soared above the Mediterranean, heading for the mainland. Icarus was having the time of his life. He flew amongst the birds and did loop-de-loops. Daed had worried him not to fly too low, because the sea spray would wet and loosen the wax, and not too high, because the sun's heat would melt them. But as soon as he was airborne, all the warnings went in one ear and out the other. He flew as high as he could, and sure enough, the wax turned to liquid and he plummeted earthward. Then he died.

But Daed saw his son die, and he survived! Yaaaay!