A Kongming lantern, the oldest type of hot air balloon This 1818 technical illustration shows early balloon designs. A model of the Montgolfier brothers balloon at the London Science Museum The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. On November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, the first manned flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers. A hot air balloon consists... Read Full Story
With just a few weeks left of school, most of us aren't going to be redecorating the classroom. If you took everything down for testing, though, you might want a quick end of the year theme for a bulletin board just so you don't have to put it all back up again.How about hot air balloons?This is one of the happiest themes, but it can also be one of the most frustrating, because there are very few ready-made resources for it.Here's one: Eureka's "The Sky is Your Limit" banner.CTP has done... Read Full Story
To the glorious roll call of aerial pioneers, daring aviators and
magnificent men in flying machines can be added a new name. Kent Couch,
a 48-year-old owner of a petrol station, yesterday succeeded in his
third attempt to conquer the skies of northwest America, flying more
than 230 miles in a garden chair supported by more than 150
helium-filled party balloons.Equipped with a GPS device, an
altimeter and a strong mug of coffee, Couch rose into the air from his
hometown of Bend, Oregon, and... Read Full Story
Just when I was getting a good grip on double latte, I looked outside and saw that the hot air balloons are flying again. Silent bubbles of hot air floating across the blue blue sky. I'm not sure what hot air balloons have to do with wine, but they both seem to flourish in Napa Valley. Read Full Story
Have you ever wanted to take a Hot Air Balloon Ride? The feeling of flying over the treetops, sometimes so close you could reach out and touch them. We finally did it! What a joy to see a raccoon washing his fish at the edge of a lake before he eats it and on the other side of the lake is a man fishing alone early in the morning. That is what it is all about! We were picked up at the Galleria Palms Orlando by a van and shuttled to the site where the balloons were staged to go up into the sky... Read Full Story
