Word: balloonist
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Dates: during 1981-1981
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Presidents have been intrigued and sustained by events in the air since the nation's birth. From Philadelphia in 1793, George Washington wrote out a note in English for Jean Pierre Blanchard so that the French balloonist, on his pioneering flight over the Delaware River, would not panic the New Jersey natives. Thomas Jefferson benefited from early airmail in 1803: a carrier pigeon flew from New York to Washington bearing the good news that Napoleon had agreed to the Louisiana Purchase. Teddy Roosevelt was the first occupant of the White House to fly, even though he was no longer...
DIED. Jeannette Piccard, 86, pioneering balloonist who, along with her late husband Swiss Scientist Jean Piccard, became the first woman to probe the stratosphere in a balloon flight over Lake Erie in 1934, and who 40 years later became one of the first American women to be ordained an Episcopal priest; of cancer; in Minneapolis...