Interesting Facts about Balloons and Ballooning

Here are some interesting facts about balloons:

• Before toy balloons were invented people inflated pig bladders and animal intestines.
• Silver metalized balloons were invented in the 1970s for the New York City Ballet.
• The world's first hydrogen-filled gas balloon was launched on August 27, 1783, by Professor Jacques Charles and Robert brothers who designed and made it.
• The first rubber balloon was made by Professor Michael Faraday in 1824, out of two sheets of rubber whose edges were pressed together.
• Hot air balloon was the balloon to make the first recorded manned flight. It was made by the Montgolfier brothers and launched on 21 November 1783.
• Jean-Pierre Blanchard was the first to fly across the English Channel. He did it on January 7, 1785.
• Helium balloons were also used on other planets. The Russian space probes Vega 1 and Vega 2 used helium balloons to drop scientific instruments into the atmosphere of Venus in 1985.
• The first gas balloon ended up destroyed by terrified villagers, after it landed, who didn’t know what it was.
• In 1808, de Grandpré and le Pique fought a duel over Paris from balloons over the Mademoiselle Tirevit. Le Pique lost because his balloon was shot and he died in the crash.
• Popped toy balloon makes the noise of a sonic boom. When a hole is made in a balloon, it starts to grow at almost the speed of sound in rubber which is greater than the speed of sound in the air which makes a boom.
• The first living beings that flew in a balloon were a sheep called, a duck and a rooster. Sheep had a name Montauciel which means "Climb-to-the-sky".
• Latex balloons are biodegradable.
• When the burner of a hot air balloon is turned, it can be quite noisy in the basket of a balloon. But when the burner is turned off it is very quiet in the balloon. There is not even any wind noise since the balloon is moving with the wind.
• The first use of a balloon for military purposes was like an observation point.
• Felix Baumgartner set the altitude record for a manned balloon flight at 39.045km on October 14, 2012 in a gas balloon.
• The first balloon and aircraft disaster happened in May 1785 in the town of Tullamore, in Ireland. Hot air balloon crashed and made a fire which burned down about 100 houses.
• Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (one of the Montgolfier brothers) was inspired by laundry drying over a fire and ash that flew on the hot air to build the first large hot air balloon. His idea was that smoke has a special gas, which he called Montgolfier Gas, which has a unique characteristic he called levity.
• Hot air balloons are made out of woven rattan and have floors made of plywood (although there is one balloon that has a floor made of reinforced glass). There are also older balloons that have their gondolas made of aluminum and fiberglass.
• Solar balloons are a type of gas balloons that use air that is heated by the sun's radiation and in that way gain buoyancy. The first man to fly in a solar balloon was a Tracy Barnes on 1 May 1973.
• Cluster ballooning is a form of (not too legal) ballooning where a balloonist is attached with a harness to a cluster of rubber balloons usually filled with helium.
• Tethered balloons, blimps, were used since the First World War as a method of defense against airplanes. In the First World Word, they were placed behind the trenches while the Second World War saw them above the urban places.