an incomparable sensation

Sophie Blanchard was a French aeronaut and the first woman to work as a professional balloonist. A celebrity, she not only celebrated Napoleon’s 42nd birthday from the air, but also earned from him the title ‘official aeronaut of the restoration.’

She even worked with Napoleon on a lofty plan to invade England through the air before determining it was impossible.

Her last flight was in Paris, on the 6th of July, 1819, when one of her fireworks somehow “took a perpendicular direction to the balloon and set fire to it.”

The rightmost picture is from Robb Sagendorph’s America and her Almanacs, where I first read about the “Melancholy Fate of Madame Blanchard.”

Blanchard and her husband believed a female balloonist would be novel enough to solve their financial woes. Her husband, due to a heart attack, fell from his balloon above The Hague in 1808. He died a year later. His first flight had been almost 25 years earlier.

Sophie continued flying for another ten years, perhaps from financial necessity, or perhaps her passion for that “incomparable sensation.”