Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Up, Up, and Away . . .

On this day, two and a quarter centuries ago, two French brothers named Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier sent aloft an unmanned balloon that reached an altitude of over a mile. This was the first public demonstration of hot-air ballooning, and it marks an important point in aeronautical history. Since Daria and her father once . . . oh, wait, that was just Jake. Since Jake once flew in a balloon ("Of Human Bonding") and had to have a tree limb removed from his body later on, this historical factlet is relevant to Daria. Thank you for listening. Um, reading.


PPMB
  • Miss Ann and Her Five Sisters, by Szcz (continued): An interesting take on several family trees at once.
  • Red Centre, by TheSecretSharer (continued): This just gets weirder and better all the time.

Yawning all over the place, have to do a few more things before crashing early. Cheerio!

4 comments:

E. A. Smith said...

Hmmm . . . Montgolfier sounds a little bit like Morgendorffer. Maybe there's something in that . . . ?

The Angst Guy said...

Name change at Ellis Island?

Anonymous said...

Phonetically, the names are quite different : the t is mute, the ier sounds like yeah, and there's the on sound that has no equivalent in English.

Meaning wise, it's not better. IIRC, Montgolfier means something like "hill overlooking the bay/sea".

The Angst Guy said...

But both names start with "Mo"!