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Here's a letter that George Washington writes to a friend and it sounds funny today, but I have only newspaper accounts of air balloons, to which I do not know what credence to give.

The tales related of them are marvelous, and lead us to expect that our friends in Paris, in a little time, will come flying through the air instead of plowing through the ocean to get to America. George Washington had to be amazed when later, he would actually see the sight of a balloon flying over Philadelphia the first time in the United States that Americans had been seen flying in the air like birds.

Inspired by the ballooning craze that had begun in France just a decade earlier,

Americans eagerly took to the skies in tethered balloons, turning these flights into scientific experiments and public spectacles, but the most notable was the French-born aeronaut.

That's what they called the balloonists, aeronaut. Jean-Pierre Blanchard, who made history

with the first manned balloon in the United States. January 9th, 1793.

It was from the Walnut Prison in Philadelphia, Walnut Street, and everybody was watching.

It already crossed the English Channel, and even in the 1790s, when you wanted to do something,

you brought along an American to make it cool.

When Blanchard made his first crossing of the English channel, American Dr.

John Jeffreys, well known for being a weather observer, was with him on that balloon.

Jeffries was a loyalist, and so it was not in the United States at this time. None of this was merely a shell. They were equipped with a barometer, thermometer, and he was recording

scientific data from the air. Now, it's interesting that, and I didn't know this until I was

researching this little episode, is that there isn't like anyone to regulate the air over the

United States, but you're going to have to take off from land.

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