Before a crowd at the Palace of Versailles including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Montgolfier brothers launched an ornately decorated hot air balloon carrying a sheep, a duck, and a rooster—the first living creatures known to fly in a balloon. The eight-minute flight, covering about two miles, demonstrated that a living body could survive at altitude, paving the way for the first human ascent weeks later.
The Montgolfiers had already stunned crowds in Annonay with an unmanned balloon flight in June 1783, but the risks of manned flight remained unknown—could a person even breathe or survive at whatever height a balloon might reach? To find out cautiously, they selected three animals for the Versailles demonstration: a sheep chosen as a physiological stand-in for a human, a duck as a control since ducks already flew safely at altitude, and, almost as an afterthought, a rooster to test effects on a bird that did not typically fly high.
The blue-and-gold balloon, emblazoned with royal symbols, rose from the palace courtyard and drifted roughly two miles before descending near the Bois de Vaucresson. Legend holds the rooster suffered a slightly injured wing, possibly from a sheep's kick rather than the flight itself. The animals' safe return persuaded Louis XVI's court that human flight was feasible, and just two months later Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes became the first humans to fly, in a Montgolfier balloon over Paris.
Key people: Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, Louis XVI