Interesting Facts about Balloons and Ballooning

Here are some interesting facts about balloons:

Before toy balloons were invented people inflated pig bladders and animal intestines.
Silver metalized balloons were invented in the 1970s for the New York City Ballet.
The world's first hydrogen-filled gas balloon was launched on August 27, 1783, by Professor Jacques Charles and Robert brothers who designed and made it.
The first rubber balloon was made by Professor Michael Faraday in 1824, out of two sheets of rubber whose edges were pressed together.
Hot air balloon was the balloon to make the first recorded manned flight. It was made by the Montgolfier brothers and launched on 21 November 1783.

Jean-Pierre Blanchard was the first to fly across the English Channel. He did it on January 7, 1785.
Helium balloons were also used on other planets. The Russian space probes Vega 1 and Vega 2 used helium balloons to drop scientific instruments into the atmosphere of Venus in 1985.
The first gas balloon ended up destroyed by terrified villagers, after it landed, who didn’t know what it was.
In 1808, de Grandpré and le Pique fought a duel over Paris from balloons over the Mademoiselle Tirevit. Le Pique lost because his balloon was shot and he died in the crash.

Popped toy balloon makes the noise of a sonic boom. When a hole is made in a balloon, it starts to grow at almost the speed of sound in rubber which is greater than the speed of sound in the air which makes a boom.
The first living beings that flew in a balloon were a sheep called, a duck and a rooster. Sheep had a name Montauciel which means "Climb-to-the-sky".
Latex balloons are biodegradable.
When the burner of a hot air balloon is turned, it can be quite noisy in the basket of a balloon. But when the burner is turned off it is very quiet in the balloon. There is not even any wind noise since the balloon is moving with the wind.
The first use of a balloon for military purposes was like an observation point.
Felix Baumgartner set the altitude record for a manned balloon flight at 39.045km on October 14, 2012 in a gas balloon.
The first balloon and aircraft disaster happened in May 1785 in the town of Tullamore, in Ireland. Hot air balloon crashed and made a fire which burned down about 100 houses.
Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (one of the Montgolfier brothers) was inspired by laundry drying over a fire and ash that flew on the hot air to build the first large hot air balloon. His idea was that smoke has a special gas, which he called Montgolfier Gas, which has a unique characteristic he called levity.

Hot air balloons are made out of woven rattan and have floors made of plywood (although there is one balloon that has a floor made of reinforced glass). There are also older balloons that have their gondolas made of aluminum and fiberglass.
Solar balloons are a type of gas balloons that use air that is heated by the sun's radiation and in that way gain buoyancy. The first man to fly in a solar balloon was a Tracy Barnes on 1 May 1973.
Cluster ballooning is a form of (not too legal) ballooning where a balloonist is attached with a harness to a cluster of rubber balloons usually filled with helium.
Tethered balloons, blimps, were used since the First World War as a method of defense against airplanes. In the First World Word, they were placed behind the trenches while the Second World War saw them above the urban places.