Still the countrymen were not to lose their hour of glory. Merely to repeat what had already been done was not enough. Their balloon was to be flown from the grounds of the Palace of Versailles, before the king and court and all the great folk of Paris, with half the people of the city craning their necks to watch it pass over. So they loaded aboard a basket containing a sheep, a duck and a rooster, and these three became aircraft’s first passengers.
When the U. S. Army Air Corps years later sought an appropriate insignia for its lighter-than-air division, it could think of nothing more fitting than a design which included a rooster, a duck and a sheep.
Everyone was ready for the next step. A French judge had the solution. He offered the choice to several prisoners awaiting execution—a balloon flight or the guillotine. Two volunteered, felt they had at least a chance with the balloon, whereas the guillotine was distressingly final. They had nothing to lose. That word rang through Paris. A young gallant named De Rozier objected.
“The chance might succeed,” he said. “The honor of being the first man to fly should not go to a convict, but to a gentleman of France. I offer my life.”
Even the king protested at this needless risk, but De Rozier took off the following month, flew half way over Paris, landed safely. This happened on Nov. 21, 1783.
Among the witnesses to these experiments was Benjamin Franklin, the American ambassador, himself a scientist of no small renown. He predicted great things for aeronautics.
“But of what use is a balloon?” asked a practical-minded friend.
“Of what use,” replied the American, “is a baby?”
A little later, on January 7, 1785, Jean Pierre Francois Blanchard, a Frenchman, and Dr. John Jeffries, an American, practicing medicine in England, inflated a balloon, took off from the cliffs of Dover at one o’clock in the afternoon, arrived safely in Calais three hours later.
