Daedalus, the master architect, had built the Labyrinth for King Minos to hold the Minotaur, but had then told Ariadne how Theseus could enter, kill the minotaur, and then escape. When King Minos found out about this, he imprisoned Daedalus and Daedalus’s son, Icarus, telling them they would never be allowed to leave the palace.
Daedalus, however, quickly worked out that although he could not pass through the walls and out, he could go over the walls. He began to gather seagull feathers and, using wax, build wings for both him and his son. Soon they were ready to fly, but before they did Daedalus told his son to not fly too close to the sea, nor too close to the sun.
The two rose into the air, and were soon free of the palace walls, and then free of Crete and King Minos. Like birds, they continued to fly, out over the water. It was a wonderful feeling, and soon Icarus forgot what his father had said; he flew up and up, not noticing how the sun was melting the wax, and one by one feathers were falling from his wings, until finally Icarus was too heavy for them. Down and down he fell, falling past his father, into the sea in which he drowned.