There are already more than a million views of this, in what looks like one day’s time (but may be a hoax and may be old news, but does not look like either as this is posted, so we hope to add to the hype if we are correct).  Thanks to the folks at The Verge for this story:

A Canadian duo and their Kickstarter-funded, pedal-powered helicopter have won one of the longest-standing challenges in the history of aviation — keeping a human-powered aircraft hovering up in the air at height of at least 9.8 feet, within a 32.8 by 32.8-foot square, for 60 seconds minimum. The challenge, known as the Sikorsky prize, has withstood at numerous failed attempts since it was established in 1980, 33 years ago, even with a $250,000 bounty. But it was finally bested earlier in June by the Atlas, a gigantic human-powered helicopter designed by Cameron Robertson and Todd Reichert, aeronautical engineers from the University of Toronto, who cofounded a company AeroVelo.

The pair funded the construction of their winning aircraft through a successful Kickstarter campaign last year, and just barely managed to beat a rival team from the University of Maryland, whose craft Gamera failed to stay within the square-foot range required by the prize, as Popular Mechanics reports.

The Atlas is controlled by having a single pilot pedal a bicycle-like wheel to turn the aircraft’s four enormous, independent rotors (one at each corner). The entire span of the craft is 190 feet. On June 13th, with Reichert pedaling away in the pilot’s seat in an indoor soccer stadium in Vaughn, Ontario, the Atlas reached a height of nearly 11 feet, stayed aloft for 64.11 seconds, and drifted only 32 feet. But it took a month for the results to be confirmed. “We’re very excited for the world to learn about this exciting milestone in aviation history,” Robertson wrote on AeroVelo’s blog today.

Read the whole post here.