1709 - 1st known ascent in hot-air balloon, Bartolomeu de Gusmao (indoors)
2014 - International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta Opens in Bristol, England
“who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I should
get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where
always
it's
Spring) and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves”
― E.E. Cummings, Collected Poems