Letitia Sage was an actress who on 29 June 1785 at St George’s Fields, as Sharon Wright writes, became the first Englishwoman to fly.
The 1836 ‘Royal Vauxhall Balloon’ ascent that set an eight-decade world distance record for manned flight
by David E. Coke Amongst the many extraordinary facts about 19th century London, one stands out as almost unbelievable – an urban myth, you might think. How could the world record for manned-flight distance possibly have been set by a flight from Vauxhall – in 1836, the year before Queen Victoria came to the throne? Yet […]
Robert Cocking: rise and fatal fall of a pioneer parachutist
The tragic end of the balloon enthusiast who attempted a parachute descent
Charles Green (1785-1870)
English balloonist whose outstanding achievement was his flight with two companions in 1836 from Vauxhall Gardens, London, to Weilburg, Germany, a distance of 480 miles. Green’s 18-hour trip set a long-distance balloon record for flights from England not beaten until 1907. He was accompanied on the flight by Monck Mason and Robert Hollond, who financed […]
Balloons
Balloons have been about for centuries. Archimedes, using his famous principle, proposed the use of balloons around 250BC but it is not known if he experimented with this idea. Small hot air balloons were used for open air lighting by the Chinese in 170 AD. In 1513 Leonardo da Vinci also got hot air balloons […]
