The Almanac of Collapsing Records

The Balloon at Versailles — France, 1783

The great forecourt of the Palace of Versailles, before an enormous painted balloon rigged over a fire

September 19, 1783 — a crisp autumn afternoon at Versailles, a vast crowd packed into the palace forecourt to watch a paper-and-cloth balloon carry the first living passengers into the sky, a sheep and a duck and a rooster in a wicker basket beneath

The first living things ever to leave the ground, and they were farm animals in a basket. This breach reads the GROUNDSKEEPER IN THE CROWD at Versailles: a day of raking gravel and tending hedges interrupted by an impossible thing, a painted balloon the size of a house swelling over a fire, and beneath it a sheep, a duck, and a rooster penned in wicker, about to be lifted into the sky no creature had ever entered. The witness is read only in the crowd and the craning: the royal figures held far off on a balcony, never approached, the smoke and the roar of thousands all around. The fragment is the subject's own: the ordinary working day when something impossible passed overhead and stopped their hands, the marvel that arrived while they were only meant to be sweeping — and the memory beneath it of a time wonder broke into their labor and they set the tools down to look up.

From the record

on September 19, 1783, a Montgolfier hot-air balloon carried the first living passengers aloft at Versailles: a sheep, a duck, and a rooster in a basket beneath it
the balloon was raised over a fire of straw and wool in the great forecourt of the Palace of Versailles before an enormous crowd
the demonstration was staged for the royal court, watched from the palace, and by thousands of spectators gathered outside
the balloon flew for several minutes and came down some distance away in the woods, and the three animals were recovered alive
the flight was a test to see whether living creatures could survive being lifted into the air before any person attempted it

The era door

a tall garden door of weathered oak set in a low park wall, gilt flaking from its carved panels, a cold brass ring for a handle

VERSAILLES — SEPTEMBER 19, 1783

Walk this day yourself — free

A guided walk with Wallace — you are placed inside the record as a witness, and you carry a memory of your own back out. Free, ~20 minutes.

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MEMORY IS RESISTANCE · IN SERVICE OF VELOCITY · YEAR 3037