Interesting Fact for the day.

Nick often gives me a topic to consider. The latest one is hot air balloons. After thinking about this over the past several hours, this is what I have dredged out of my memory.

Two Frenchmen in the late 1700's, pioneered the use of hot air balloons in Europe. They first worked out how to get lightweight bags to rise with hot air, and demonstrated it's use by sending three animals, one of which was a duck, I suppose because it could fly down if there were problems. Eventually they started making manned flights, at first tethered to the ground, but later without connections to the ground.

Hot air balloons have been around a lot longer than the 1700's though, having been in use in China for over 2000 years, as well as in India, Japan and Indochina, in the form of sky lanterns. The Chinese used them for signalling troop movements. There is evidence that they also used the balloons in conjunction with large tethered manned kites. Marco Polo commented on how the Chinese used manned kites to survey the surrounding waters by ships at sea. There is no evidence that the Chinese created manned balloons.

Sky lanterns are used in celebrations, festivals and other special occasions, throughout Asia.

Lately there has been pressure in the some countries to ban the use of sky lanterns. When they were made from rice paper and thin slivers of bamboo, these lights in the sky were completely biodegradable. However on landing, they have lately been causing fires in crops, fields and forests. Also modern sky lanterns are often produced with thin metal wires to hold the balloon into shape. These have been thought to be ingested by jet aircraft, causing damage to the engines, as well as by cattle, when they have fallen into pastures, causing damage to valuable livestock.

That's all for today. Later on, I'll be checking my facts and will post an update.

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The first documented balloon flight in Europe was demonstrated by Bartolomeu de Gusmão.

On 19 Sep 1783 Pilatre De Rozier launched the first recorded hot air balloon in Europe with passengers, a sheep, a duck and a rooster and the balloon stayed in the air for a grand total of 15 minutes. I remembered the duck, thought the sheep might be a goat, for some reason completely forgot the rooster, in my mind it was a pig.

The first untethered manned flight in Europe was on On 21 Nov 1783 by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes.

Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han kingdom, in the Three Kingdoms era (220–80 AD) used airborne lanterns for military signalling.

The Chinese did use manned kites in for spotting troop movements, and Marco Polo did record the use of a manned kite on a ship for checking the surrounding waters.

Hot air balloons might been used by people of the Nazca culture of Peru some 1500 to 2000 years ago, used as a tool in designing the famous Nazca ground figures and lines.

Sky Lanterns are under threat of legal action. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11265560