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Speaker 1: How do how do you? Everybody? Welcome to Saturday. We

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Speaker 1: hope you are having a good weekend if these are

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Speaker 1: indeed your days off. Since we are headed into a

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Speaker 1: new year in everyone's perhaps thinking about setting goals for

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Speaker 1: achieving great things, in which we hope for all of you,

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Speaker 1: it seems like a good time to read visit the

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Speaker 1: story of a woman who achieved a great deal in

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Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century, Sophie Blanchard, and this show we

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Speaker 1: talked a little about the ballooning craze, but it's mostly

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Speaker 1: about one female aeronaut who was so obsessed with flying

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Speaker 1: even after her husband, famed balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard, died

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Speaker 1: in a ballooning accident. So we'll talk about how she

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Speaker 1: kept on going after that. So let's just take to

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Speaker 1: the skies. Welcome to stuff you missed in history class

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Speaker 1: from how Stop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast I'll Fry. I'm Tracy being Wilson uh And

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Speaker 1: two hundred years ago there was a craze sweeping Europe

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Speaker 1: which was balloon Omania. Manned balloon flights were amazing crowds

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Speaker 1: and capturing imaginations, and balloons became a popular decorative motif

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Speaker 1: from everything from ceramic plates to copper cake tins and

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Speaker 1: even integrated into fashion. Uh. And one of the famed

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Speaker 1: figures in this whole balloon ing um madness was a

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Speaker 1: woman named Sophie Blanchard, and she was the first woman

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Speaker 1: to become a professional balloonist. But how did a timid girl,

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Speaker 1: which she was according to most people, become a trailblazer

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Speaker 1: in what was an extremely dangerous career field. Before we

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Speaker 1: get to that story, we need to look a little

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Speaker 1: bit at how balloons became so popular in the late

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Speaker 1: eighteenth century. So in seventeen sixty six there was a

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Speaker 1: scientific thing that happened, which is at British philosopher and

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Speaker 1: chemist Henry Cavendish made a discovery that really kind of

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Speaker 1: catapulted ballooning into the public eye. He isolated hydrogen, which

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Speaker 1: at the time he called inflammable air. It wasn't named

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Speaker 1: hydrogen until another scientist worked with it, later named Antoine Levoisier.

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Speaker 1: This new knowledge of this lighter than air element led

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Speaker 1: to experimentations in balloon technology that weren't based on hot

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Speaker 1: air uh, and so the invention of the gas balloon,

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Speaker 1: which was also known as Charlie or Robertine uh took place,

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Speaker 1: whereas nowadays we're back to hot air. But there's a

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Speaker 1: reason for that that kind of comes up in this podcast. Well,

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Speaker 1: and you may guess what it is if you have

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Speaker 1: listened to our podcast about the Hindenburg. Yeah, it's not

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Speaker 1: a super big scret that hydrogen. They called it inflammable

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Speaker 1: air for a reason. Yes, it caught fire extremely easily. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so spoiler alert, there will be fire, fire will happen.

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Speaker 1: So when Sophie was still just the child in the

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighties, two brothers by the name of Mongolfier were

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Speaker 1: experimenting with balloon technology. France's King Louis the sixteenth was

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Speaker 1: intrigued by the Montgolfies work, and he proposed that they

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Speaker 1: send two criminals up in a manned flight when the

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Speaker 1: technology had reached the appropriate five Yeah, they had. Balloons

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Speaker 1: had started small and we're getting bigger and bigger, and

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Speaker 1: Louis the sixteenth is like, we could send up a

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Speaker 1: couple of criminals. There's no real risk there. Something happened

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Speaker 1: that sort of demonstrates the element of danger that was

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Speaker 1: involved here, like not quite safe enough for regular people,

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Speaker 1: but in the view of the king criminals would be fine, yeah,

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Speaker 1: But the Mongolfiated brothers did not actually agree their first flight,

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Speaker 1: they actually opted to send up farm animals. They started

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Speaker 1: with a duck, a rooster and a sheep, and the

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Speaker 1: animal's main history is the first living creatures in flight

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Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty three and at n and a France

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Speaker 1: and they landed safely on the ground after about ten

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Speaker 1: minutes aloft. So the king and his queen, who was

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Speaker 1: Brie Antoinette, were apparently utterly delighted by this exhibition, as

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Speaker 1: was a very large crowd that had gathered to witness

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Speaker 1: this event. Sounds like a like the setup to a

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Speaker 1: duke to me that there were get in a balloon

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Speaker 1: and delight the King of Frances. Yes. A few months later,

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Speaker 1: one of the brothers, et Tienne Mongolfier, got to be

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Speaker 1: the first human to man a balloon flight. So at

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Speaker 1: Hen's flight was tethered, but not long after his controlled

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Speaker 1: fouray into the sky, an untethered flight carried the French

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Speaker 1: marquis Francois Laurent le Vie d'arlande and Pilatrude Rosier on

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Speaker 1: a brief flight which was witnessed once again by King

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Speaker 1: Louis the sixteenth as well as Benjamin Franklin, and again

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Speaker 1: a sizeable crowd. People were really quite entranced by these

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Speaker 1: balloon flights. The man Sophie would marry was born on

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Speaker 1: July fourth, seventeen fifty three. Jean Pierre Francois Blanchard was

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Speaker 1: twenty five years older than she was, and Jean Pierre

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Speaker 1: started his own exp yeraments with flying machines in the

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Speaker 1: seventeen seventies. His focused on the use of a rowing

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Speaker 1: in the air, almost like you would have ship, and

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Speaker 1: trying to get air currents to lift the vessel. But

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Speaker 1: once the Mongolfie Brothers showed the success of balloon ing,

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Speaker 1: Jean Pierre switched gears completely enjoined the ballooning craze. Jean

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Speaker 1: Pierre made his first balloon ascent in March of seventeen

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Speaker 1: eighty four. Sophie would have been around six at this point,

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Speaker 1: and in January seventy five he made the first manned

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Speaker 1: flight over the English Channel with an American doctor, John Jeffries.

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Speaker 1: They started in England and landed in France. YEAH subsequent

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Speaker 1: attempt to cross the Channel in the opposite direction by

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Speaker 1: Platro de Rosier, who was had been in one of

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Speaker 1: those earlier flights, did not end so well. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: resulted in the first recorded aviation fatality. In his heart,

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Speaker 1: Jean Pierre was a showman above anything else, and to

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Speaker 1: make money, he took his balloon ing on tour. During

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Speaker 1: this time, he abandoned the wife he had been married

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Speaker 1: to since seventeen seventy four, Victoire Lebron, and their four

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Speaker 1: children to poverty, while he traveled and showed crowds his

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Speaker 1: arenautical skills. Ye. There, Jean Pierre is a very interesting

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Speaker 1: character and he could be his own whole podcast because

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of crazy stories about him, and

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Speaker 1: they are always these little like, oh, he was doing

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Speaker 1: these amazing things. By the way, he did some really

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Speaker 1: seedy stuff as well, like he left his wife, he

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Speaker 1: tried to cheat some business partners along the way. There.

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Speaker 1: There are all of those, so keep that in mind. Um.

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Speaker 1: But as he was doing all of his showmanship, he

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Speaker 1: decided to add a bit of flare to the proceedings,

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Speaker 1: and so he would sometimes drop a parachuted dog from

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Speaker 1: the balloon basket or shoot off fireworks. Um. And the

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Speaker 1: first dog drop happened on June three seive and according

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Speaker 1: to accounts, the dog survived, so Blanchard would repeat the

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Speaker 1: experiment on subsequent shows because people were so wowed by

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Speaker 1: this idea of a dog being dropped from a balloon

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Speaker 1: and surviving. He also tried parachuting himself. He was the

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Speaker 1: first person to successfully use a parachute, and at one

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Speaker 1: point he added sales to his balloon in the hope

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Speaker 1: of improving propulsion and maneuvering. Jean Pierre was basically a

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Speaker 1: rock star of the ballooning world and even a trend setter.

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Speaker 1: Balloon enthusiasts copied his hairstyle and the images of his

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Speaker 1: balloon appeared on ladies, fans and other accessories, and he also,

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Speaker 1: as one of his business ventures, founded a short lived

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Speaker 1: school called the Balloon and Parachute Aristatic Academy, but it

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Speaker 1: did not last terribly long. In sevente Geen Pierre ascended

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Speaker 1: from a prison yard in Philadelphia aboard a balloon, the

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Speaker 1: first North American ascent for an audience which included the

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Speaker 1: US founding fathers. It was his forty five ascension, and

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Speaker 1: he was doing all of these incredible things. He actually

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Speaker 1: still holds records, and he was incredibly popular, and he

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Speaker 1: did a lot of theatrical lifts and it sell tickets.

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Speaker 1: But Jean Pierre really found himself in some pretty steep

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Speaker 1: financial trouble. And to make matters worse, he had angered

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Speaker 1: John Jeffries, who had been as primary financial contributor and

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Speaker 1: was also his partner in the English crossing, the English

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Speaker 1: Channel crossing. But he had always handled his money poorly.

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Speaker 1: Even when he was making a lot of money, he

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Speaker 1: was spending far more than he was taking in, and

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Speaker 1: he was trying to find new ways to reinvigorate the

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Speaker 1: interest of spectators and always sell more tickets and book

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Speaker 1: more shows. Before we go on, we need to finally

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Speaker 1: talk about Sophie. Sophie was born on March. Her birth

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Speaker 1: name was Marie Madeleine Sophie Armand one of the bothersome

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Speaker 1: aspects of this story is that we just don't have

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Speaker 1: a lot of information about what her life was like

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Speaker 1: pre Jean Pierre. Yeah, almost any biography you read of her,

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Speaker 1: when you look it up in books on the history

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Speaker 1: of ballooning, it's litter really like she was born and

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Speaker 1: then she married this guy, and then she became important.

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Speaker 1: Happened in between? Yeah, there must have been, but it

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Speaker 1: really is pretty difficult to find any of them. But

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Speaker 1: what we do know is that she was a very

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Speaker 1: nervous young woman. People that know who knew her describe

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Speaker 1: her as being afraid of even writing in carriages. U

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Speaker 1: Physical descriptions of her from multiple sources all describe her

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Speaker 1: as very small, with angular features. Sometimes she's described as

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Speaker 1: bird like, and most accounts of her appearance are actually

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Speaker 1: kind of unflattering, which I found one that said she

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Speaker 1: was pretty, but the rest were kind of mean. I

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Speaker 1: am sort of tired of mean descriptions of ladies personal

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Speaker 1: features in history. Yeah, I mean that happens now today too.

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Speaker 1: At some point we will be history and people will

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Speaker 1: talk about how everyone was, talking about how ugly everybody was.

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Speaker 1: That gets on my nerves. John, she had a very

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Speaker 1: interesting life. It didn't really matter. I think it matters.

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Speaker 1: The focus on appearances is getting out my nerve. Jean

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Speaker 1: Pierre and Sophie were married at some point between seventeen

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Speaker 1: nine and eighteen o four, and it kind of varies

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Speaker 1: depending on the source you look at, so you might

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Speaker 1: see any number of conflicting dates. Yes, some suggest that

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Speaker 1: um there, it's hinted in some biographies that he may

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Speaker 1: have married her as a way to propel his show career. Um.

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Speaker 1: Others suggest that they had already been married, but and

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Speaker 1: what had happened to his old wife? She died in poverty. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: thanks Jean Pierre. Sorry Victoire, You're apparently not important enough

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Speaker 1: to him to worry about. Uh, he's got to do

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Speaker 1: his balloon thing. And as part of his plan to

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Speaker 1: drum up new income, Jean Pierre hatched this plan to

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Speaker 1: add Sophie to the show, to add novelty and attract

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Speaker 1: bigger crowds. So again some some books will suggest that, um,

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Speaker 1: him taking her up in a balloon was like a honeymoon,

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Speaker 1: and others just say no, no, they were already married.

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Speaker 1: But he took his wife, who at this point was

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Speaker 1: just aged six of his age, up in their first

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Speaker 1: duo flight together on December four at Marseille. That sort

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Speaker 1: of unexpectedly, given everything everybody had said about her at

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Speaker 1: this point, Sophie found balloon flight exhilarating, and she didn't

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Speaker 1: show any of her timidity that she had shown on

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Speaker 1: land while she was aloft, So this attraction to traveling

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Speaker 1: was born. She said to have described balloon flight as

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Speaker 1: an incomparable sensation. In addition to her as sense with

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Speaker 1: Jean Pierre, Sophie also started to make solo balloon trips

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Speaker 1: as well, and just as a note, while Sophie is

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Speaker 1: often referred to as the first female aeronaut, she was not,

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Speaker 1: strictly speaking, the first female balloonists. Several other women had

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Speaker 1: made a sense in balloons, both tathered and free before her,

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Speaker 1: but she was the first woman to fly a balloon solo,

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Speaker 1: and she was certainly the first to make a career

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Speaker 1: out of it. During a flight over the Hague in

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Speaker 1: February eighteen o eight, Jean Pierre had a heart attack

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Speaker 1: and he fell out of the basket that he and

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Speaker 1: Sophie were in, and we wound up following more than

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Speaker 1: fifty feet or fifteen point two meters, and Jean Pierre

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Speaker 1: never recovered from his injuries from this fall, and he

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Speaker 1: hung on for a little more than a year, but

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Speaker 1: he died on March seventh of eighteen o nine, and

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Speaker 1: he was only fifty six at the time. When Jean

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Speaker 1: Pierre died, he left this mountain of debt behind, and

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Speaker 1: rather than being a quiet and retiring widow, Sophie he

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Speaker 1: vowed to make good on all of those debts. She

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Speaker 1: kept on with her ballooning career to bring in money,

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Speaker 1: and she fulfilled her promise to pay back the creditors

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Speaker 1: that Jean Pierre owed. That always kind of blows me away,

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Speaker 1: Like this woman in the early eighteen hundreds is left

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Speaker 1: not just destitute, but deeply in debt by her husband,

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Speaker 1: and she's like, okay, I'll handle it all right, ballooning,

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Speaker 1: let's do it. That's pretty impressive. Uh. And she is

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Speaker 1: said to have loved ballooning at night in particular, and

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Speaker 1: she eventually got into the habit of all night trips.

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Speaker 1: There was one biographical article I was reading that suggested

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Speaker 1: that part of why she might have its pure speculation,

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Speaker 1: enjoyed ballooning even though she was afraid of like everything

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Speaker 1: on the ground, was that it was quiet there. And

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Speaker 1: what was really scaring her, like in horse carriages and

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Speaker 1: you know, out on the streets, was just the noise

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Speaker 1: of it. It is quite noisy to be in a

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Speaker 1: carriage drawn by horses over like cobblestone or whatever. But

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Speaker 1: we don't know. But if that was the case, it

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Speaker 1: would make sense that she would really find it to

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Speaker 1: be a good place to spend the night. Uh and

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Speaker 1: then following her to cease spouse's lead, she also took

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Speaker 1: on some theatrics. She would use these night trips to

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Speaker 1: launch fireworks from the balloon to dramatic effect. That is

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Speaker 1: just as bad of an idea as it sounds horrible idea.

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Speaker 1: Please don't ever go up in a helium balloon. This

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Speaker 1: was hydrogen. Don't do helium either. Don't set off fireworks

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Speaker 1: trouble look even if the what's inside of it is

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Speaker 1: not an immensely flammable gas. On June, Sophie made her

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Speaker 1: sixteenth ascension as part of a celebration of the marriage

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Speaker 1: of Napoleon and Marie Louise, and Napoleon was extremely fond

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Speaker 1: of Sophie. He appointed her Chief Air Minister of Ballooning,

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Speaker 1: and in this role she actually developed and assessed plans

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Speaker 1: for balloon based aerial raids of England for Napoleon, although

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Speaker 1: she eventually had to report to him that this really

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Speaker 1: was not a feasible way to wage a war, that

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Speaker 1: these were not missions that he should plan on doing.

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Speaker 1: They needed dragons, like in the Terrier books. That's what

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Speaker 1: I think. Even after the French monarchy was restored, Sophie

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Speaker 1: stayed in the good graces of the nation's leaders. As

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Speaker 1: part of Louis the eighteenth Restoration celebration, Sophie ascended in

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Speaker 1: a balloon from pont Neuf and was eventually named official

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Speaker 1: aeronaut of the Restoration by the Bourbon King. And she

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Speaker 1: was also something of a daredevil in the air, and

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Speaker 1: she really did become quite famous throughout Europe. Uh. What's

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Speaker 1: interesting is that she accomplished a lot of feats that

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Speaker 1: her husband had only dreamed of, and of course she

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Speaker 1: also got herself in a lot of dangerous situations. One

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Speaker 1: of the big accomplishments was that she crossed the Alps

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Speaker 1: by balloon, which UH Jean Pierre had always said he

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Speaker 1: was interested in doing but never achieved. En route to

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Speaker 1: turn in April of eighteen twelve, she had nosebleeds and

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Speaker 1: icicles formed on her face and hands a little bit dangerous.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen seventeen, she had a really weird sort of

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Speaker 1: brush with danger. She mistook a flooded field for a

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Speaker 1: meadow and she tried to land there and she nearly drowned.

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Speaker 1: But fortunately there were horsemen that had been tracking her flight,

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Speaker 1: and when they saw the balloon go down, they were

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Speaker 1: able to get to her and pull her to safety.

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Speaker 1: Her night trips would also sometimes last all night, and

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Speaker 1: she would occasionally fall asleep in the basket, which isn't

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Speaker 1: really maybe the smartest thing doze off while you're conducting

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Speaker 1: a vehicle. I'm gonna go with a vehicle that is

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Speaker 1: in the sky and also flammable. None of the vehicles

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Speaker 1: should you sleep on your but especially if it's in

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Speaker 1: the sky and also flammable. So on July six, nineteen,

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Speaker 1: Sophie prepared for one of her regular appearances over the

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Speaker 1: Tivoli Gardens in Paris, and she normally made this ascent

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Speaker 1: twice each week. When she was in Paris, she would

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Speaker 1: sell tickets to spectators who would come and watch her balloon,

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Speaker 1: and they would also watch her huge nighttime fireworks show.

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Speaker 1: On this particular night, she was carrying a larger than

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Speaker 1: normal compliment of the fireworks because she was preparing what

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Speaker 1: she called her Bengal fire display, and this was a

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Speaker 1: slow burning fireworks shoe. She reported to have said at

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Speaker 1: all sisera as she got into the basket, which means

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Speaker 1: let's go for the last time. Whether she actually meant

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Speaker 1: for the show to be her last one. She was

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Speaker 1: forty one at the time and all she was financially

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Speaker 1: stay stable, but she was not exactly rolling in money

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Speaker 1: and ready to retire. It's not really year. We don't

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Speaker 1: have a record we're sure of whether she really meant

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Speaker 1: for this to be her last show. Yeah, there are

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Speaker 1: discussions of it in different books. One is just that

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Speaker 1: because she had so many fireworks, there are some stories,

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Speaker 1: and again they're unverified, that people were like, no, no,

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Speaker 1: you shouldn't go. It's it's too much, and others were like,

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Speaker 1: come on, let's start the fireworks. And it could be

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Speaker 1: that she was just saying for the last time, I'm going,

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Speaker 1: we're doing this, just that it didn't have anything to

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Speaker 1: do with it being her last time in the air.

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Speaker 1: But it did prove to be a little bit prophetic

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Speaker 1: because as the show started, the wind shifted and Uh,

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Speaker 1: Sophie would do this thing where she would drop fireworks

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Speaker 1: from the basket on parachutes, similar to how they had

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Speaker 1: dropped dogs and people after the pass ket previously. UH,

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Speaker 1: and they would burn out as they fell to the ground.

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Speaker 1: But because of the wind shift, she was being carried

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Speaker 1: away from to Voli gardens. Something went wrong with the show,

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Speaker 1: and Sophie's balloon can on fire. As you may have

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Speaker 1: guessed was going happened by the abundant foreshadowing and just

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Speaker 1: the simple science, like the choice of hydrogen is as

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Speaker 1: a gas to inflate the balloon and then carry fire

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Speaker 1: and carry fire around. Yeah, there was some spectators cheered,

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Speaker 1: believing that the flames were part of just a huge

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Speaker 1: spectacle that was intentional and part of the show. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she had such a reputation for putting on these amazing

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Speaker 1: shows that they were like, wow, she's making you look

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Speaker 1: like the balloon's on fire. The balloon was on fire. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And she is said to have tried to slow the

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Speaker 1: descent of the balloon by cutting ballast as it went

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Speaker 1: up in flames. So she's kind of floating over Paris

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Speaker 1: at this point, um, and trying to slow things down

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Speaker 1: so she doesn't just crash into something. And there are

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Speaker 1: some accounts that suggest that spectators thought, even after they

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Speaker 1: had realized that this was not part of the show,

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Speaker 1: they really thought that she might have a good shot

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Speaker 1: at landing safely. But as she was working, the balloon

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Speaker 1: hit the roof of a house and she was thrown

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Speaker 1: out of it. She was found dead on the street.

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Speaker 1: According to newspaper accounts yea. Some suggests that she broke

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Speaker 1: her neck um others simply say that she was dead

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Speaker 1: in the street, and they don't go into any detail.

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Speaker 1: Sophie was buried in Paris in the Parlasches Cemetery, and

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Speaker 1: her monument was paid for through public donations. It features

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Speaker 1: a pedestal with a sphere and a flame atop it,

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Speaker 1: representing the aeronaut's fiery final voyage. Find that kind of morbid.

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Speaker 1: It is a little bit weird to show the manner

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Speaker 1: of death on the monument. There's an apoct full story

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Speaker 1: that the funds for the monument were actually the profits

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Speaker 1: from ticket sales, which the Toboli Gardens management had initially

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Speaker 1: earmarked for Blanchard's children, but then they realized she had

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Speaker 1: no children and reallocated them to the monument. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: couldn't find verification on that one, but it was such

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Speaker 1: a fun odd story, like they were like, we must

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Speaker 1: give the money to her children. Someone going, she doesn't

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Speaker 1: have kids, we must build a monument. It's so almost

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Speaker 1: money python esque, and it's kind of uh well meaning,

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Speaker 1: uh incorrectness, that is, and I don't mean to disparage

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Speaker 1: her or using hydrogen for her balloon, that is what

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Speaker 1: was available for her to you well, and it was

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Speaker 1: an age of excitement, you know, where things were being experimented,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it had only been about fifty years

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Speaker 1: since hydrogen had been identified and these balloons kind of

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Speaker 1: represented like a new age of what they could do

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Speaker 1: and achieve and how far they could go and well

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Speaker 1: all part of science. And as we've talked about, it

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Speaker 1: took a very long time for people to stop filling

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Speaker 1: things with hydrogen to then float people around in Yes,

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Speaker 1: there is actually an animated documentary that's being directed by

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Speaker 1: Gen Sachs titled The Fantastic Flights of Sophie Blanchard that's

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Speaker 1: been in production um for a while now, since it's

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Speaker 1: successfully funded through an Indigo Go campaign, and as of

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Speaker 1: about a month ago, their last update was that the

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Speaker 1: production was working on the final animation sequence. So there

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Speaker 1: will very soon theoretically be a new short animated documentary

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Speaker 1: I of those two words together about Sophie Blanchard and

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Speaker 1: her life and work and uh this crazy balloon career

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Speaker 1: that she had, which you know, relatively short, but quite fascinating.

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Speaker 1: I think that sounds like fun and I hope it's

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Speaker 1: available for people to stream or otherwise see. Yeah, you

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Speaker 1: can visit the website now and we'll link to it

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Speaker 1: in the show notes. Um, and you'll see kind of

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Speaker 1: the pitch animation that they did for Indiegogo, which is

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Speaker 1: quite interesting and it's a fun style, and you'll see

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Speaker 1: kind of where it's going. Thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out

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Speaker 1: of the archive, if you heard an email address or

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Speaker 1: a Facebook U r L or something similar during the

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Speaker 1: course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now, so

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Speaker 1: here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast

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Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, and then we're at

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Speaker 1: Missed in the History. All over social media you that

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Speaker 1: is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram.

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Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. H