1. Sophie Blanchard was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and after her husband's death she continued ballooning, making more than 60 ascents.
27 Facts About Sophie Blanchard
1. 2.
Sophie Blanchard lost consciousness on a few occasions, endured freezing temperatures and almost drowned when her balloon crashed in a marsh.
3.
Sophie Blanchard's craft crashed on the roof of a house and she fell to her death.
4.
Sophie Blanchard was born Marie Madeleine-Sophie Armant to Protestant parents at Trois-Canons, near La Rochelle.
5.
Sophie Blanchard had abandoned his first wife, Victoire Lebrun, and their four children to travel round Europe pursuing his ballooning career, and she later died in poverty.
6.
Sophie Blanchard was terrified of loud noises and of riding in carriages, but was fearless in the air.
7.
The couple faced bankruptcy as a result of Sophie Blanchard's poor business sense, and they believed a female balloonist was a novelty that might attract enough attention to solve their financial problems.
8.
Sophie Blanchard was the first woman to pilot her own balloon and the first to adopt ballooning as a career.
9.
Sophie Blanchard conducted experiments with parachutes as her husband had, parachuting dogs from her balloon, and as part of her entertainments she launched fireworks and dropped baskets of pyrotechnics attached to small parachutes.
10.
The couple had still been in debt at the time of Blanchard's death, so to minimise her expenses, Sophie was as frugal as possible in her choice of balloon.
11.
Sophie Blanchard used a hydrogen-filled gas balloon, as it allowed her to ascend in a basket little bigger than a chair, and there was no requirement for the volume of material necessary for a hot-air balloon.
12.
Sophie Blanchard became a favourite of Napoleon, and he appointed her to replace Andre-Jacques Garnerin in 1804.
13.
Sophie Blanchard was able to dissuade Napoleon from this impractical plan by pointing out that the prevailing winds over the Channel made such an invasion nearly impossible.
14.
Sophie Blanchard made ascents for Napoleon's entertainment on 24 June 1810 from the Champ de Mars in Paris and at the celebration mounted by the Imperial Guard for his marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria.
15.
Sophie Blanchard performed at the official celebration of his baptism at the Chateau de Saint-Cloud on 23 June 1811, with a firework display launched from the balloon, and again at the "Fete de l'Emperor" in Milan on 15 August 1811.
16.
Sophie Blanchard made an ascent in bad weather over the Campo Marte in Naples to accompany the review of the troops by Napoleon's brother-in-law Joachim Murat, the King of Naples, in 1811.
17.
When Louis XVIII entered Paris on 4 May 1814 after being restored to the French throne, Sophie Blanchard ascended in her balloon from the Pont Neuf as part of the triumphal procession.
18.
Sophie Blanchard crossed the Alps by balloon, and on a trip to Turin on 26 April 1812 the temperature dropped so low that she suffered a nose bleed and icicles formed on her hands and face.
19.
Sophie Blanchard almost died on 21 September 1817 when, on a flight from Nantes, she mistook a marshy field for a safe landing spot.
20.
The canopy of her balloon became caught in a tree which caused the chair to tip over; Sophie Blanchard, entangled in the rigging, was forced into the water of the marsh and would have drowned had not help arrived soon after her landing.
21.
On 6 July 1819, in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, her hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire and Sophie Blanchard, entangled in the surrounding net, fell to her death.
22.
Sophie Blanchard had performed regularly at the Tivoli Gardens, making ascents twice a week when she was in Paris.
23.
Sophie Blanchard had been warned repeatedly of the danger of using fireworks in her exhibitions.
24.
Once she had cleared the treetops Sophie Blanchard began the display by waving her flag.
25.
Sophie Blanchard began to descend rapidly, but the balloon, caught in the wind, continued to move off from the pleasure gardens even as it went down.
26.
Sophie Blanchard's tombstone was engraved with the epitaph "victime de son art et de son intrepidite".
27.
Jules Verne mentioned her in Five Weeks in a Balloon and, in The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky likened the thrill of committing oneself in gambling to the sensation that Sophie Blanchard must have felt as she fell.