A Brief History
On August 17, 1978, Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman made ballooning history by becoming the first to pilot a manned balloon across the Atlantic Ocean, flying from Maine to France in the Double Eagle II, a Helium balloon. Today, we take a look at a few momentous balloon flights.
Digging Deeper
On November 21, 1783, the first ever manned balloon flight took place in France, when Francois Pilatrê de Rozier and Francois Laurent took flight in a hot air balloon made by the Montgolfier brothers. In 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries made history in the first balloon to cross the English Channel.
In 1960, Ed Yost made the first flight in a modern propane fueled hot air balloon, starting a popular sport.
In 2002, Steve Fossett made history by becoming the first to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon, a combination hot air and helium bag called Bud Light Spirit of Freedom on a two week flight.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Holmes, Richard. Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air: An Unconventional History of Ballooning. Vintage, 2014.
May, Gustav. Ballooning: Its History And Principles. Palala Press, 2018.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by FlugKerl2 of Double Eagle II Gondola, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
