A human first rose into the sky in a hot-air balloon
On this day · 15 October 1783
Tethered by ropes above Paris, Pilatre de Rozier became the first person to leave the ground in a Montgolfier balloon.
On 15 October 1783, in a Paris garden, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier climbed into the wicker gallery of a Montgolfier hot-air balloon and rose roughly 84 feet into the air. The craft stayed tethered to the ground by ropes, but for four minutes and 25 seconds a human being floated above the earth for the first time — a milestone in flight.
The paper-and-cloth balloon was the work of brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, who had already sent a sheep, a rooster, and a duck aloft a month earlier to prove the ride was survivable.
These cautious captive ascents were rehearsals. Just weeks later, on 21 November 1783, de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes cut the ropes entirely and made the first free, untethered human flight, drifting some five miles across Paris.
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