Word: ballooned
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...death of the husband of famed Essayist Mme Anne Louise Germaine de Staël. Promptly the Comte divorced his own wife, hastened to Geneva, informed Mme de Stael that he and she, ''the most extraordinary persons who exist.'' would be married in a balloon and would create a child "who will startle the world at large." Mme de Staël said...
First air-wedding to be recorded, few years later, was that of a young Belgian aeronaut, Georges Raoul Thiel, and Madeleine Bailly. Their balloon, a primitive affair composed of gasbag and plain square basket, was named Lime de Miel ("Honeymoon"). The Thiels were married by the Brussels burgomeister in the public square, then cast off in the Lime de Miel to sail over the countryside, landing prettily in a cow pasture a few miles away...
...years later (1824) a pre-nuptial flight ended in tragedy. The English aeronaut Thomas Harris took his fiancee up in a balloon from Vauxhall, London. After getting altitude he opened a hydrogen valve, to hover in the skies with his lady. Then occurred the same mishap as befell Commander Settle and his stratosphere balloon over Chicago last fortnight. The valve refused to close again, down came the balloon. Aeronaut Harris dumped all ballast, threw overboard his own clothing and even his fiancee's. Still the balloon plunged downward. Grimly Harris kissed his companion goodbye, then jumped to his death...
Harper's Weekly recorded the first balloon honeymoon in the U. S. in 1865, when Mary West Jenkins of Northampton, Mass, married John F. Boynton. Their pilot was Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, who had proposed to fly a balloon across the Atlantic but gave up the scheme when the Civil War broke out. (He organized and commanded a two-balloon air force for the Union Army.) A crowd of 6,000 cheered the take-off of the Jenkins-Boynton party from Manhattan's Central Park. The balloon was a gorgeous affair, the basket draped with...
...moment at every fair is the grand balloon ascension. One night last week at the world's greatest fair. 40,000 persons crowded into Chicago's Soldier Field to see what promised to be the greatest balloon ascension ever made-a flight to the stratosphere by Lieut.-Commander Thomas G. W. ("Tex") Settle. Ceremonies lasted seven hours. Soldiers and sailors paraded the field. Massed bands countermarched. Radio loudspeakers brought from Manhattan the voice of Professor Arthur Holly Compton. scientific director of the flight, wishing Commander Settle luck in breaking Auguste Piccard's 10-mi. altitude record...