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The first manned hot air balloon was mistaken for an eldritch monster by rural French citizens who didn’t understand it and was “beaten to death” by a French mob after it descended to the ground.
Okay, so it was actually unmanned, and it was a hydrogen balloon, but it does seem to be a pretty widely repeated story from a contemporary newspaper. This was shortly after the first hot air balloon flight and might have had less fanfare, so it seems a bit more reasonable that peasants 21 km away wouldn’t have heard anything about it until the large levitating blob was coming at them.
The first manned hot air balloon was mistaken for an eldritch monster by rural French citizens who didn’t understand it and was “beaten to death” by a French mob after it descended to the ground.
I’m skeptical. Can I bother you for a source?
It wouldn’t bother me at all.
Okay, so it was actually unmanned, and it was a hydrogen balloon, but it does seem to be a pretty widely repeated story from a contemporary newspaper. This was shortly after the first hot air balloon flight and might have had less fanfare, so it seems a bit more reasonable that peasants 21 km away wouldn’t have heard anything about it until the large levitating blob was coming at them.
Wait, I said manned? D’Oh!
Wasn’t he also on death row? He was offered a pardon, if he survived.
Yes, they did that for all those experiments back then.