5 июня 1783 года взлетел первый воздушный шар

Brothers Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier sewed a 600 cubic meter canvas bag and pasted it with paper. Evil tongues gossiped that it was done for advertising purposes – as the younger brother owned a paper manufactory. The inventive brothers wrote “AD ASTRA,” which means “To the stars” in Latin, on the paper, and went to the market square of their home town, Annone. And there, in front of an astonished public, they filled a bag with smoke produced by burning wool and wet straw, which corresponded to their ideas about the motive power of flying machines, and launched what we now call the first balloon. Or – after the brothers' last name – montgolfier. In the autumn of the same year the Montgolfiers demonstrated the flight of the balloon to the king in Versailles. This time the montgolfier flew with a crew of ram, duck and rooster.