November 21: On This Day in World History … briefly
Ascending from the gardens of the Château de la Muette in the Bois de Boulogne, the balloon travelled some 5 miles (9km) over Paris, reaching a height of 500ft before making a safe landing near the Luxembourg wood.
1783: First untethered hot air balloon flight makes history
A balloon built by the Mongolfier brothers and piloted by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent le Vieux d’Arlandes made the first untethered flight in history.
After several tethered tests to gain some experience of controlling the balloon, de Rozier and d’Arlandes made their first untethered flight in a Montgolfier hot air balloon on 21 November 1783, taking off at 1.54 pm from the garden of the Château de la Muette in the Bois de Boulogne, in the presence of the King. Also watching was US envoy, Benjamin Franklin.
Their 25-minute flight travelled slowly about 5½ miles (some 9 km) to the southeast, attaining an altitude of 3 000 feet, before returning to the ground at the Butte-aux-Cailles, then on the outskirts of Paris. After the flight, the pilots drank champagne to celebrate the flight, a tradition carried on by balloonists to this day.
D’Arlandes proposed a flight to cross the English Channel in 1784, but the plan came to nothing.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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