21 November 1783 – in Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes make the first manned untethered hot air balloon flight.
21 November 1783 – in Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes make the first manned untethered hot air balloon flight.
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The French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier developed a hot-air balloon in Annonay, Ardeche, France, and demonstrated it publicly on 19 September 1783, making an unmanned flight lasting 10 minutes.
After experimenting with unmanned balloons and flights with animals, the first balloon flight with humans aboard, a tethered flight, performed on or around 15 October 1783, by Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, who made at least one tethered flight from the yard of the Reveillon workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Later that same day, Pilatre de Rozier became the second human to ascend into the air, reaching an altitude of 26 m (85 ft), the length of the tether.
The first free flight with human passengers was made a few weeks later, on 21 November, 1783.
King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but de Rozier, along with Marquis François d’Arlandes, petitioned successfully for the honor.
Depicted: First public demonstration of Montgolfiers’ balloon in Annonay, 4 June 1783.
Hooray !Hooray!@ Hooray!
This is in all textbooks on flight.