Today is Balloon Ascension Day! Jean Pierre Blanchard is a household name. In the Blanchard household, anyway. Born in France in 1750, he was the first to fly in the Americas, more than a century before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, making today NATIONAL BALLOON ASCENSION DAY! On January 9, 1793, outside the walls of the Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia, the capital of the brand new country The United States of America, aviation pioneer and self-confessed balloonatic Blanchard became the first to fly in the New World, just as he had been the first man to make hot-air balloon ascensions in Germany, Poland, The Netherlands and Austria. He also teamed with American Dr. John Jeffries to become the first international air travelers when they flew from England to France across the English Channel. “Ringside” seats were sold to amazed Philadelphians and locals officials for $5 a pop, soon dropping to $2 to boost a sluggish box office. Jean Pierre Blanchard was an international celebrity at the time, a talented engineer and inventor, one of the most celebrated Aeronauts in Europe and designer of many flying balloons, also called “dirigibles.” Which still doesn’t ring a bell with anyone, does it? Even being described as “handsome and flamboyant” and being dressed for his ascension in “bright-blue knee breeches, matching waistcoat and a hat with white feathers” didn’t help his case. Once airplanes were invented and daredevil pilots became all the rage, balloonists were yesterday’s papers, quaint eccentrics with a genteel hobby, floating silently away into the mists of history. The first Balloon Ascension Day was, paradoxically, marked by the descent of a zeppelin, which explains why it is celebrated as Zeppelin Declension Day in Canada and the British Virgin Islands. On January 9th, 1863, the Confederacy attempted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln using a battle zeppelin. It landed on the front lawn of the White House shortly after the dinner hour, while the President was sitting on the stoop, enjoying a Mint Julep (“Puts hair on your chest!,” President Lincoln was often heard to declare when defending his preference for the Southern drink). The zeppelin disgorged a crack team of Confederate Special Forces, which in those days weren’t called ‘special forces’ but ‘Herr Balloners’ because they were Prussian mercenaries and they rode around in giant, football-shaped balloons. They also wore puffy pink uniforms, leading Union special forces members (Swedish mercenaries who excelled at hand-to-hand combat and deep tissue massage) to call them, rather derogatorily, the ‘Falling Poofters’. You wouldn’t think President Lincoln would find a bunch of puffy pink mercenaries spilling out of a bobbing balloon all that threatening, but his first words upon seeing them were reported to be, “Holy sh*t!” He then stripped bare to the waist, flexed his pecs while Mary Todd oiled them, and shot the mercenaries with his revolver, Hemingway-style, killing them all before the Union guards even knew they’d arrived. Yes, Mary Todd was that fast with the oil. He had the bodies piled into a mound, jabbed the ol’ Stars and Strips into the middle of them, Iwo Jima-style, and declared, “I declare today, January 9th, to be Balloon Ascension Day.” It is assumed his confusion with ascension vs. declension was brought about by adrenaline. Either way, he’d just killed ten men with one revolver, and no one was about to correct him. A hastily called joint session of Congress, finding itself on the wrong end of a President Lincoln with a revolver and a dangerous glint in his eye, quickly passed the new holiday into law. As a compromise with the Southern delegation (they were trying to avoid even more war with the South), they dropped the requirement for time off from work and the mandatory giving of lighter-than-air gifts. Also, balloons of a certain color were devalued, only counting as three-fifths of a white balloon. This shameful caving in on the value of balloons of a certain shade was not corrected until after the Civil War ended, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. That is why today, and every January 9th, we celebrate Balloon Ascension Day! Or, if you’re a Canuck or a Limey Virgin Islander, Zeppelin Declension Day! And I can’t think of a better way for you to celebrate this fine holiday or the bravery of President Lincoln than by purchasing Marlowe and the Spacewoman:
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 13:54:57 +0000
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