On This Day in History: July 6

Death of a female balloonist

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Long before the Wright brothers put a motor on a plane and said fly you motherfucker, people were getting high in balloons. And it wasn’t exactly safe. Because that stuff called hydrogen has a tendency to explode. 

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 6, 1819--

Jean-Pierre Blanchard was a pioneer in ballooning. His wife, Sophie Blanchard, was a fellow aeronaut and the world’s first female professional balloonist, performing regularly for Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1808, when Jean-Pierre was 54, he was flying his balloon at The Hague and then said aw fuck heart attack ow shit that hurts and fell from his balloon and smacked into the ground and did not die. For a year. Then he died. Sophie, who was just shy of 31, said well shit that’s a bummer but I need money so she kept working as a balloonist. 

After her husband’s death she made several dozen more ascents, and had some close calls. She got so high she lost consciousness, and almost froze because it’s not real warm when you go up to heights commercial airlines fly. Another time she crashed into a marsh and almost drowned. 

Because it was the early 19th century and torturing animals was seen as entertainment, her performances included dropping dogs from her balloon and letting them parachute to the ground, which I’m sure the dogs thought was fucking hilarious. 

Her husband died with debts and ballooning didn’t pay that well, so Sophie was as cheap as possible in her use of material, which wasn’t that smart, but then she did something that was very not smart. On July 6, 1819, while performing at Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she was shooting fireworks from her balloon for the crowd. She’d done it many times before, and many times she’d been warned: Uh, Sophie . . . you know that fireworks and hydrogen balloons aren’t the greatest combo, right? And she was all fuck it gotta make money. 

The fireworks set her balloon on fire and the gas escaped, causing a rapid descent. She crashed into a roof of a house and then fell from the roof to the street below and died. Sophie Blanchard was the first woman to perish in an aviation accident. 

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