First Manned Balloon Flight

November 21, 1783

Over Paris, Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes rose into the air in the Montgolfier brothers' paper balloon, tending a straw fire in its belly. They drifted five miles before landing in a vineyard. Humans had left the ground under their own contraption for the first time. Within weeks Jacques Charles flew a hydrogen balloon higher and longer, and the race between hot air and gas was on.