WEBVTT - Balloon Riots 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.440 of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.560 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Listener. 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:20.400 Josiah, who has sent to us just a ton of 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.960 very good episode suggestions sent in a request for an 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:28.520 episode on the eighteen nineteen balloon riot. We do have 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.640 a number of episodes on balloons and ballooning, including the 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:37.839 Mongolfier Brothers and Sophie Blanchard and essay Andre's attempt to 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.600 get to the North Pole by balloon, and we have 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:45.720 mentioned in those episodes that balloons became a huge fad 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.760 starting in the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century. 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:52.440 I don't think we. 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:57.240 Have ever talked about how much rioting was associated with that. 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:02.960 We have talked more about excite and not about tearing stuff. Apart, 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.600 this eighteen nineteen incident that Josiah requested was not the 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.399 only riot to talk about. In other words, we are 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.400 going to cover several in this episode, but it is 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:17.640 not all of the balloon riots. Over the course of 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.679 my research, I found various mentions of other riots as 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:26.600 kind of asides or mentioned in footnotes or a newspaper 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:29.920 article would say blah blah blah, similarly to the thing 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.000 that happened to this other time, But then I was 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.479 not able to find a lot of detail about that 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:39.440 other time briefly mentioned. It's also possible that there were 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.319 other more documented balloon riot incidents that I just didn't 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:47.720 happen to stumble over while working on this. These riots 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:51.440 all involved large balloons filled with either hot air or 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.720 a lighter than air gas like hydrogen or coal gas, 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:59.960 which is a mix of mostly hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.200 Ones so we're talking about took place in France, the UK, 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:07.400 the US, and Australia. But the earliest precursors to these 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.040 kinds of balloons came from another part of the world. 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.440 They date back to the third century BCE in China. 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.079 These were flying lanterns also called sky lanterns, that were 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.720 made from paper and open at the bottom. A candle 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.960 or some other source of flames suspended under the opening 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:29.520 heated the air inside, causing the lantern to float. Sky 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.960 lanterns are quite small, you can launch them from your hands, 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.440 and by the eighteenth century, various scientists and inventors were 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:39.280 trying to figure out how to use that same principle 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:44.920 to make much larger balloons. The first successful launches of 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.200 balloons that were big enough to carry human beings took 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:54.080 place in France. After testing various materials and designs, brothers 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.799 Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Mongolfier made a balloon from 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.240 cloth and paper that had a diameter of about thirty 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.239 three feet or ten meters. They lit a fire under 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:08.720 the opening of this balloon to fill it with hot air, 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.400 and they successfully sent it aloft on June fourth, seventeen 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.079 eighty three. They did not have anybody aboard that first time. 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.520 That balloon stayed in the air for about ten minutes. 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.840 On September nineteenth, they sent a duck, a rooster, and 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.079 a sheep up in a slightly smaller balloon, and all 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:32.640 of those animals returned to Earth safely hooray. From there, 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:37.040 the Mongolfier brothers tried tethered balloon flights with people on board, 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.720 and then their first untethered flight with a human crew 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:44.839 was on November twenty first, seventeen eighty three. We talked 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.840 about the Mongolfier brothers in more detail in our episode 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.119 on them that ran as a Saturday Classic on January 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:55.760 twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, While the Mongolfier brothers were 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.320 working on hot air balloons, other people were working on 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:05.440 balloons with some other gas or gas mixture. Professor Jacques 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:11.200 Charles commissioned brothers and gen Robert and Nicola Luis Robert, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:15.480 who is sometimes also called Marie Noel Robert, to build 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:18.920 a balloon. They took a demonstration flight from the champ 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.440 de Mars in August of seventeen eighty three. This was 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:26.840 a varnished silk balloon filled with hydrogen gas. They made 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:31.240 that hydrogen gas by pouring sulfuric acid onto iron filings. 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:36.440 This balloon successfully went aloft without a crew, but from 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.839 there it drifted to the northeast of Paris. When it 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.719 landed near the village of Geness, people who didn't know 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:46.159 what it was reportedly attacked it with things like sticks 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.000 and pitchforks. On December first. 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:52.200 Of that year, Nicola, Louis and Jacques successfully went aloft 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.719 themselves in a hydrogen balloon, which was launched from the 0:04:55.720 --> 0:05:00.440 Tuileriri gardens. Within a year, more than one hundred eighty 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:04.920 balloon launches had taken place all around Europe, often before 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:09.720 just enormous crowds. When the Mongolfier brothers sent those animals, 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.920 aloft An estimated one hundred and thirty thousand people had 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.680 been watching, including King Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:20.919 When Robert and Charles took their first flight, it was 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:25.560 reportedly before a crowd of four hundred thousand people, which 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.800 would have been more than half the population of Paris, 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:34.360 and people were fascinated. Letters and diary entries from the 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:38.719 late eighteenth century are full of references to balloons and 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:42.240 which launches people had seen, and how big the crowds were, 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.240 and what the balloon looked like. This includes numerous letters 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.480 from American visitors who were in France for the negotiations 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.479 of the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the Revolutionary War, 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:58.159 so that includes Benjamin Franklin. Balloon hats for ladies came 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.680 into fashion with puffy crowns and wide brims, and balloons 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:06.240 were emblazoned on every kind of souvenir imaginable. A broadside 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.960 called Balloon Wish printed in Boston read quote in this 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:15.039 wild romantic age, what fantastic whims engage high and low 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.599 and old and young, all with balloon madness, rung balloon 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:22.760 hats and frying pans, balloon ribbons, balloon fans, balloon gauzes, 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.560 balloon caps, balloon hoops or balloon traps. Balloons and balloon 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:31.919 launches were also depicted in stories, novels, poems, plays, and 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:36.039 visual artwork. As an example, in seventeen eighty four, the 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.600 Covent Garden Theater, which we just talked about in October, 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.440 staged a play called Harlequin Junior or The Magic Cestus, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.880 in which past podcast subject Joseph Grimaldy was supposed to 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.680 handle a real floating balloon that was scaled down for 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:57.600 use on the stage. However, the theater scrapped this part 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.120 of the show after deciding it was quote very offensive 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.440 and in some degree dangerous in the confined air of 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:05.920 the theater. 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.720 That decision makes sense because they had to burn material 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.400 under this balloon to inflate it in the theater just 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.640 seemed like a bad idea given the known propensity of 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:17.240 theaters to catch on fire. 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.800 In the theater lit by candlelight at this point, so 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:25.040 if the balloon fell in the wrong place, double trouble. 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.280 The culture in parts of Europe was so saturated with 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.440 balloons that some people actually got sick of hearing about 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:36.760 them almost immediately. In September seventeen eighty three, English author 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.080 and playwright Samuel Johnson wrote a letter to Sir Joshua 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.040 Reynolds that said, in part, quote, I have three letters 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.000 in this day, all about the balloon. I could have 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.880 been content with one. Do not write about the balloon. 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:54.560 Whatever else you may think proper to say that cracks 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:54.960 me up. 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.120 It's also kind of sad that he died a few 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:03.880 months later, so one of his final frustrations balloons balloons. 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:08.440 The term balloon omania appeared in writing for the first 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:12.040 time two years later in a letter from past podcast 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:17.360 subject Horace Walpole to Madame du Defont, after Jean Francois 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:20.960 Pilatre de Rosier died in a balloon crash while trying 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:25.400 to cross the English Channel. Walpole wrote, quote, the balloon 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:29.120 omania is I think a little chilled, not extinguished by 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:35.360 Rosier's catastrophe. Walpole also expressed concerns about whether balloons would 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.559 be used for military purposes, and that was something people 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.840 had started thinking about basically right after those very earliest launches. 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.079 We talked about that more in our episode on the 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.720 balloons of World War Two that came out in March 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:53.319 of twenty twenty three. This eighteenth century fascination with balloons 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.920 was interconnected with ongoing discoveries in the sciences that it 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.679 started to evolve in the sixteenth century and the European 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:03.080 intellectual movement that has come to be known as the 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:07.480 Age of Enlightenment. People were similarly fascinated with experiments with 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:12.520 electricity that were also happening around the same time. By necessity, 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.720 balloon launches were the most public of all the various 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.280 experiments that were going on. The balloons were huge, and 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:21.319 even if they were launched from some out of the 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.280 way place, people could still see them in the air. 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.800 People made and launched hot, air and gas balloons in 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.120 all kinds of places beyond just England and France, and 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.839 beyond just Europe. But in these two countries there was 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.200 kind of a competitive rivalry going on. But there were 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:43.680 also some differences in how ballooning developed in those two countries. 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:47.240 A lot of balloon experiments in France were under the 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.960 auspices of the French Academy of Sciences, and that meant 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.320 that until the French Revolution, they were effectively being overseen 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:59.360 by the scientific community and ultimately the monarch. But in England, 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.440 the Royal Society didn't take up that same level of 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.600 interest in ballooning. So the ballooning community in England was 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:10.760 more made up of adventurers who might work with scientists 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.480 or allow scientists to bring instruments on board, but they 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.679 could be focused a lot more on excitement and spectacle 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:22.120 and showmanship than on research and discovery. But it was 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.280 clear from the beginning that balloon launches could spark a 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.400 backlash if they did not go as planned. On January sixteenth, 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:33.240 seventeen eighty four, just weeks after humans had successfully flown 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.439 in balloons for the first time, Benjamin Franklin wrote a 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:41.240 letter to Dutch scientists Jon Ingenhause. Franklin had previously sent 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.400 Ingenhouse everything he had learned about balloons, and he said 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.680 that if Ingenhause sent someone to France, Franklin was sure 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.320 they could learn whatever they needed to figure out how 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:54.000 to make one for themselves from there. He said, quote, 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:56.839 if you undertake to make one, I think it extremely 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:00.200 proper and necessary to send an ingenious man here for 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:05.000 that purpose. Otherwise, for want of attention to some particular circumstance, 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:09.439 or of being acquainted with it, the experiment might miscarry, which, 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.920 being in an affair of so much public expectation, would 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.240 have bad consequences, draw upon you a great deal of 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.359 censure and affect your reputation. 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.840 It is a serious thing to draw out from their 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:25.520 affairs all the inhabitants of a great city and its environs, 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.840 and a disappointment makes them angry. At Bordeaux lately a 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:32.480 person who pretended to send up a balloon and had 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:35.679 received money of many people, not being able to make 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.640 it rise. The populace were so exasperated that they pulled 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:42.360 down his house and had liked to have killed him. 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.440 We will talk about some other exasperated populaces after a 0:11:47.480 --> 0:12:01.560 sponsor break. In seventeen eighty four, printmaker Jean Francois Genine, 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:06.240 who had started calling himself an artist physicist, worked with 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:11.319 Abbe Laurent Antoine Melin, who lectured in physics, to build 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.840 a balloon. Their design actually involved three balloons. There was 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.480 the primary hot air balloon and a gas filled balloon 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:21.920 that would float above it, and then a balloon filled 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.320 with cold air that would hang below it. They wanted 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:28.840 to study the atmosphere and the behavior of the three 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:32.240 balloons and the gases within them from the gondola that 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:37.120 was suspended below. They had financed their project primarily by 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.120 selling tickets to the launch, and that was the case 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:44.960 for a lot of balloonists. Even like the hardcore scientific balloonists, 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:47.960 a lot of times were funding things with ticket sales. 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:51.640 They planned to take off from Luxembourg Gardens in Paris 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.520 on July eleventh, seventeen eighty four. Although they had made 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.480 some successful test flights, this public launch failed when they 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.600 were not able to adequately fill the hot air balloon. 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.400 It's not clear whether the balloon caught fire during the 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.680 attempt to fill it, or if angry onlookers set it alight, 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.160 but it did catch fire, and once it was burning, 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:16.920 outraged ticket holders burst into the launch area, tearing pieces 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:19.680 off of the balloon and breaking up the viewing stands 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:22.960 to throw into the fire. One of the people who 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:27.360 witnessed this was Benjamin Franklin Batch, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:30.640 whose diary entry about the day described some of the 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:36.080 carried off balloon pieces as big enough to make a mattress. Afterwards, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.600 Milan and Jeanniet were ridiculed in the popular press, including 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:45.760 people writing satirical songs about them. The September eighth, eighteen 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:51.480 nineteen riot that inspired this episode took place in Vauxhall Gardens, 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:56.160 not the ones in London, but gardens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.200 that had been named for them. I think people in 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:03.679 England also said that more like Vauxhall, the balloon belonged 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.960 to a French aeronaut known as Monsieur Michel, who was 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:10.600 going to go up in the balloon and then parachute 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:13.880 down from it. This was just a few days after 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:18.520 a failed balloon launch by a different aeronaut in Camden, 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.040 and Camden is just on the other side of the 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.840 Delaware River from Philadelphia, so a lot of people from 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:28.040 Philadelphia had gone to Camden to try to watch, and 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:32.000 they had not been able to see a balloon. Vauxhall 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:35.440 Garden was surrounded by a tall wooden fence, and hundreds 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:39.200 of people had paid a dollar apiece, significant money in 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.920 these days to come inside to watch. People who did 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.000 not have a dollar or just didn't want to pay 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.440 it tried to get a glimpse from the outside, and 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:50.800 the crowd included people who traveled in from Camden or 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:55.120 from other places around Philadelphia. The balloon was big enough 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:57.600 that the top would be visible from the ground outside 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.800 the fence once it was inflated, and people also climbed 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.360 onto roofs and into trees to get a better view. 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.640 Counting the ticket holders and the people outside the fence, 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:12.560 roughly thirty thousand people were estimated to be there. Monsieur 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.560 Michelle started filling the balloon with gas at about two PM, 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:21.520 and at seven pm it still was not ready. According 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.920 to an article in the Rhode Island American published about 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.640 a week after the incident, one of the reasons it 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.160 was filling so slowly is that an impatient spectator had 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.120 thrown a rock at it, and that rock had made 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:36.520 a hole that was continually letting gas out of the balloon. 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:42.000 On the other hand, the Washington, DC Daily National Intelligencer 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.160 said this rock puncture happened after the balloon had been 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.240 somewhat filled at least and was partially aloft. Most of 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.960 the documentation I found on this whole incident was in 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.240 news reports, and all of them are slightly different from 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.360 one another. Vendors were selling food and drink at this event, 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.120 and after a while a lot of the spectators were intoxicated. 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.520 A detail that most of the accounts agree upon is 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.520 that a boy in his mid teens climbed the fence. 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.040 In some accounts, one of the garden attendants struck and 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:18.360 killed him. In others, the boy struck someone inside the 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.520 fence with a stick, and that person either hit him 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:24.600 back or hit a couple of children who happened to 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:29.600 be nearby. Rumors spread that either this teenager or a 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:32.920 young child had been killed, or maybe one of them 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:35.720 really had been killed. All of this unclear. 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:40.120 Whatever exactly the details, it sparked a riot in which 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.280 the onlookers from the outside of the fence burst through it, 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:48.000 tearing the balloon to shreds and lighting a lot of 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:52.880 the garden on fire, including its pavilion and benches. Musicians 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:56.120 had been hired to play for the day, and rioters 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:00.240 smashed their instruments. People robbed the vendors of their food 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.080 and their alcohol and other wares, and somebody stole all 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:07.120 the ticket money, which was about eight hundred dollars. Multiple 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.919 people were injured, and by nine pm Vauxhall Gardens was 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:15.679 basically destroyed. Its owner sold the property in the aftermath, 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.560 and it changed hands a couple of times before eventually 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:23.600 being rebuilt and reopened as an outdoor theater. In eighteen 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:26.399 thirty eight, an ascent that was supposed to take place 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:31.280 in Cremorne Gardens in London similarly went wrong. The event 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:33.960 was described this way in a nineteen oh seven book 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:36.760 about the gardens quote. It was announced to ascend on 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:40.240 May twenty four, and people began to assemble in the 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:43.639 grounds at noon. By seven o'clock there were nearly five 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:48.399 thousand spectators and behind a huge tarpaulin the balloon was 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.000 supposed to be in the process of inflation. The balloon 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.080 was attached to a platform in the middle of the lake, 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.639 and its peculiarity was that it had to be inflated 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:00.760 by chopped straw burnt in a brazier under the orifice 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.720 of the bag. The size of the furnace had been miscalculated, 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:08.520 and after the balloon had twice been set on fire, 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:13.240 the intrepid aeronaut decided not to ascend. Some of the 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.880 spectators considered that at any rate the balloon could be punished, 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:21.439 and a well directed volley of stones soon left the 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:25.520 monster prostrate on the lake. An attempt was made to 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.720 drag it on shore and tear it in pieces, but 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.879 at this moment the cord broke. Some of the rowdier 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.520 spirits now sought out the proprietor, hoping to duck him 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:38.480 in one of his own ponds, and when this failed, 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:43.840 they attacked the glass planes of the Lion's conservatory. Not 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.760 seemed like a great idea, but suddenly the police appeared 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:51.720 and Vesuvius burst forth in all of its fury, and 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:56.280 when the fireworks were over, the visitors quietly dispersed. In 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:58.840 case that last bit is not totally clear, this park 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.920 had a panorama of Mount Vesuvius, and they set off 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.479 fireworks from there at night, and they basically started the 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.399 fireworks display to try to get everybody to focus on 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:12.560 something else. A riot in Sydney, Australia, on December eighteenth, 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:17.320 eighteen fifty six was also similar. French balloonist Pierre Magre 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:22.000 hoped to make Australia's first successful balloon flight. Roughly five 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:24.800 thousand people had gathered by two pm, which is when 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.080 he was supposed to start inflating the balloon with hot air, 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:31.359 but he didn't actually get started until three PM, and 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.919 the crowd continued to grow and to become more and 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:39.000 more impatient. As the balloon slowly filled, people started to 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:41.520 doubt that it was even possible to inflate the balloon 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.560 because it seemed like the material was just too heavy. 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.359 They added more fuel to the fire. Things started to 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.320 move a little bit faster, and eventually the balloon did 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:54.680 start to ascend, but the cords that had been used 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.080 to tether it were dangling, and one of them got 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:01.280 caught in something. The effort to un tangle that trailing 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:03.960 cord wound up releasing a lot of the hot air 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.640 out of the balloon. As the balloon started to deflate, 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.840 people from the less expensive outer part of the viewing 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:15.720 area rushed to the inside. Either the balloon caught fire 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.240 or someone set it on fire. I feel like that's 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.080 a frequent refrain in this episode. Somebody had possibly kicked 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:24.399 the fire that had been used to fill it, and 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:26.720 then people started chanting burn. 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:30.199 The balloon, Burn the balloon. The fire spread to the 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.000 tent where the wine and straw used for fuel had 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:37.080 been stored, and that caught fire as well. Megra was 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:41.360 forced to flee during the early stages of its inflation. 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.560 This balloon had been suspended from a cord that was 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:48.720 draped between two poles, and in this chaos people started 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:52.280 knocking down the poles. One of them hit two children 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:56.240 as it fell. Eleven year old Thomas Downs was reported 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.800 to have died of a skull fracture two days after this. 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.640 An inquest found Meg to be responsible, describing him as 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:09.919 the quote perpetrator of the sham balloon incident and censuring 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:13.800 him a little more than a year later, on February first, 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.520 eighteen fifty eight, Joseph Dean went aloft in a balloon 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:21.600 filled with coal gas, taking off from Cremorne Gardens in Melbourne, 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:26.439 Australia and succeeding where Pierre Magra had not. Then, on 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:31.520 February fifteenth, Charles Henry Brown did the same. Both men 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.240 had been hired by George Coppin, who was a theater 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:38.720 entrepreneur who also funded both of the ascents. But according 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:42.760 to Brown's account, this crowd was angry with him when 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:46.280 he returned. This might have been because they got bored 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:48.680 since he had taken off really late in the day, 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.120 or it could have been because Coppin had offered a 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.800 reward for the safe return of the balloon. If something 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.280 went wrong with the launch, people might have wanted to 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.439 claim that reward, even though nothing had gone wrong and 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:06.360 Brown was still in possession of the balloon. In Brown's 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:09.399 words quote on my descent, I was treated in a 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:13.320 most brutal manner by the people assembled. Why I know not, 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:17.120 but they tore the hair from my head, bruised, crushed, 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:21.119 and almost suffocated me, besides damaging the balloon by tugging 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:24.399 at and trampling on it. This does not apply to 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.080 mister Hugh Peck of Collingwood, to whom I am under 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.480 the obligation of returning the balloon to Cremorne in safety 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.800 and declining to receive any remuneration for his trouble. Mister 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:38.120 Needham of the gas works assisted in extricating me from 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:43.000 the savages. Probably the most thoroughly documented and well known 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.000 balloon riot took place in Leicester, England, in eighteen sixty four, 0:22:47.080 --> 0:22:49.840 and we will get to that after a sponsor break. 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:03.640 Sixty four Leicster balloon riot involved a balloonist who had 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:08.320 become particularly well known because of an earlier incidence that 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:13.800 did not involve a riot that was Henry Tracy Coxwell. 0:23:13.960 --> 0:23:17.520 Coxwell was born in eighteen nineteen and had trained originally 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:19.760 as a dentist, but he had shifted a lot of 0:23:19.800 --> 0:23:23.720 his focus to ballooning after taking his first balloon flight 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:29.320 at the age of twenty five. He undertook numerous balloon launches, 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:33.640 primarily in and around London, including in London's Vauxhall Gardens 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:38.879 and Cremorne Gardens, which were ticketed money making entertainment events. 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:44.879 This earlier incident also involved doctor James Glacier. Glacier was 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:47.760 born in eighteen oh nine and he was a meteorologist 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:52.800 who wanted to conduct experiments aboard balloons. He undertook twenty 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:56.679 eight balloon ascents during his career, many of them with Coxwell, 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.119 often with funding from the British Association for the van 0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:05.720 of Science. The two men had launched from Wolverhampton, England, 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:09.919 on September fifth, eighteen sixty two. Glacier was equipped with 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:14.800 photographic plates, what bulb thermometers, a hygrometer and other instruments 0:24:14.840 --> 0:24:17.560 to study the atmosphere and weather as they ascended to 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:22.080 high altitudes. They also had several pigeons aboard to see 0:24:22.119 --> 0:24:26.520 how those pigeons would fly at high altitudes. We don't 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.560 really need to get into the detail, but only one 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:34.040 of the pigeons seems to have survived this journey. By 0:24:34.080 --> 0:24:36.919 one forty PM, they had reached an elevation of about 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:40.840 four miles or more than twenty one thousand feet. They 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:44.720 continued to ascend in about ten minutes. After that, Glacier 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:47.760 realized he could no longer see the mercury column in 0:24:47.800 --> 0:24:50.879 the wet bulb thermometer, or the hands of his watch, 0:24:51.119 --> 0:24:54.440 or any other fine detail on any of his instruments. 0:24:55.280 --> 0:24:59.200 Glacier asked Coxwell for help, but just then the balloon's 0:24:59.280 --> 0:25:02.480 valve line came entangled and Coxwell had to fix it. 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:07.320 Glacier had already noticed that Coxwell seemed winded, and Glacier 0:25:07.359 --> 0:25:09.919 had attributed that to the physical work that he was 0:25:09.960 --> 0:25:13.879 having to do around the balloon. But shortly after Coxwell 0:25:13.920 --> 0:25:17.520 went to fix this valve line. In Glacier's words, quote, 0:25:18.240 --> 0:25:20.760 I laid my arm upon the table, possessed of its 0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:24.280 full vigor, but on being desirous of using it, I 0:25:24.359 --> 0:25:28.760 found it powerless. It must have lost its power. Momentarily 0:25:29.040 --> 0:25:32.399 trying to move the other arm, I found it powerless also. 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:35.679 Then I tried to shake myself and succeeded, but I 0:25:35.800 --> 0:25:39.679 seemed to have no limbs, and looking at the barometer, 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:43.199