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First Hot Air Balloon
The first hot air balloon was created by the Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier. However, they ran a test flight, and the balloon tore a hole in its side and crashed. -
The First Hot Air Balloon to Take to The Sky
Thee first hot air balloon to take flight successfully was Created and carried out by the Montgolfier brothers using a piece of fabric billowed aloft by a fire of wool and damp straw. It was named Le Réveillon after Etienne’s friend Jean-Baptiste Réveillon. The passengers in the balloon were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. -
The First Manned Flight
In the morning at Chateau de La Muette, Pilatre de Rozier, the man who oversaw the animals flight, became the first man ever to step foot in the wicker basket and be borne aloft. -
The First Gas Powered Balloon
The first gas balloon was launched by two men, physicist Jacques Alexander Charles and Nicholas Louis Robert. The flight took off in Paris, France, and the flight lasted 2.5 hours and traveled 25 miles. The gas in the balloon was hydrogen, a lighter than air gas, created by an Englishman, Henry Cavendish in 1776. Gas balloons soon became the preferred mode of air travel. -
New Record in Passengers and Hight
In Lyons France, a gigantic balloon, that was created by the Montgolfier brothers, carried seven passengers as high as 3,000 feet. This certainly became the new record! -
Tragic Accident
The first human passenger was also the first victim of balloon travel. Pilatre de Rozier died when his balloon, filled with a combination of hydrogen an hot air, exploded during an attempt to fly across the English Channel. -
First Long Distance Ballooning
Jean Pierre Blanchard became the first to fly a hot air balloon in North America. He and his American co-pilot, Jhon Jefferies, became the first to fly across the English Channel. This was considered the first step to long distance ballooning, so this was a large benchmark in ballooning history. -
Creators End
Sadly, Etienne Montgolfier died at Neuchatel, Switzerland, and his brother Joseph Montgolfier died 11 years later in Balaruc-les-Bains in 1810.