One of man’s great ambitions has always been to fly. The early thinkers about flight were just dreamers. Later came the practical-minded inventors and scientists who made the first workable airplanes and latest developed rockets for space travel. But in between the dreamers and the scientists came the sportsman fliers.
The brothers Jacques and Joseph Montgolfier were paper manufacturers in Annonay, France. They discovered that when a small balloon of paper and linen was filed with hot air, it would float up into the sky. They called the contraptions aerostatic machines, and soon they had sent one to an altitude of about six hundred feet. But when they reported their experiment, hardly anyone believed them.
So the brothers made a large balloon, measuring 105 feet in circumference. On June 5, 1783, they filled the bag with smoke, closed it, and let it go in front of a large audience. It floated for about ten minutes, then fell into a field. Terrified people who saw it land thought it was an evil spirit and they slashed it to pieces. But at least this time there were witnesses.
On September 19, 1783, the Mongolfier brothers sent up a balloon carrying a sheep, a duck and a rooster. All the creatures landed safely. And after that they sent people up for short rides. This began the gentle sport of ballooning–and marked man’s first success in getting off the ground.
From The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers
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