Humans first flew free in a Montgolfier balloon over Paris
On this day · 21 November 1783
On November 21, 1783, two Frenchmen drifted across Paris in a Montgolfier balloon, the first humans to fly untethered.
On November 21, 1783, a science teacher named Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and an army officer, the Marquis d’Arlandes, climbed into a wicker gallery slung beneath a gaudily painted paper-and-linen balloon and made history. Lifted by a straw fire in a Montgolfier balloon, they became the first humans to fly free of the ground.
The pair rose from the Chateau de la Muette on the western edge of Paris, climbed to roughly 3,000 feet, and drifted about 5.6 miles across the city before setting down some 25 minutes later. Embers kept scorching the fabric en route, and d’Arlandes reportedly beat them out with a sponge while his companion stoked the flames.
Benjamin Franklin, watching from the crowd, noted the balloon lifting off “in the most majestic manner.”
Less than a year after the Montgolfier brothers first sent a balloon aloft, humanity had finally left the ground for good.
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