Hot to cross the Atlantic

Source | Guinness World Records / YouTube | 05 April 2024 1 minute
The history of aviation begins thousands of years ago with balloons in an attempt to get off the ground. The hot air balloon can thus be considered the first successful human-carrying flight technology, and even today we can see lots of records being attempted. The first untethered manned hot air balloon flight, however, was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes on November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, in a balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers. In 1987, Sir Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand, two iconic pioneers, were the first men to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean in a hot air balloon, although Branson had already set the Atlantic crossing record by boat a few years before his balloon adventure. The distance across the Atlantic, by the way, is 3,500 miles, and the journey was not always a smooth one. For more please check out www.guinnessworldrecords.com