Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

found by two men near Cheadle, in Staffordshire. These ingenious persons carried it within doors, and having wished to fully inflate it--half the gas having by this time escaped--they applied a pair of bellows to its mouth. By this means they only forced out the volume of the hydrogen gas that was left; and this gas, coming in contact with a candle that had been placed too near, exploded. The report was louder than that of a cannon, and so powerful was the shock that the men were thrown down, the glass blown out of the windows, and the house otherwise damaged. The men suffered severely, their hair, beards, and eyebrows being completely burnt away, and their faces severely scorched. At Grenoble, in Dauphine, De Baron let off a balloon on the 13th of January, 1784. It rose, and at first took a northern direction; but, having encountered a current of air, it was carried away in a south-easterly direction, and after flying a distance of three-quarters of a mile, it fell, having traversed this distance in fifteen minutes. A society, under the presidency of the Abbe de Mably, having constructed a balloon thirty-seven feet high and twenty feet in diameter, sent it off from the court of the Castle of Pisancon, near Romano, on the same day, the 13th of February. At first it was carried to the south by a strong north wind, but after it had risen to 1,000 feet above the surface, its course was changed towards the north. It was calculated that, in less than five minutes, this balloon rose to the height of 6,000 feet. On the 16th of the same month the Count d’Albon threw off from his gardens at Franconville a balloon inflated with gas, and made of silk, rendered air-tight by a solution of gum-arabic. It was oblong, and measured twenty-five feet in height, and seventeen feet in diameter. To this balloon a cage, containing two guinea-pigs and a rabbit, was suspended. The cords were cut, and the inflated globe rose to an enormous height with the greatest rapidity. Five days afterwards it was found at the distance of eighteen miles, and it is remarkable that, in spite of the cold of the season, and particularly of the elevated region through which the balloon had been passing, the animals were not only living, but in good condition.