Alcock and Brown: the first two names in Transatlantic Flight
In Edwardian Britain at the turn of the last century, everybody was, like, super into balloon flying. The upper class, typically, did the flying, but everybody else was welcome to attend the balloon race, meet, fairground attraction, fete, [that one time a riot] , and observe the men ascending into the heavens. Despite it being the pursuit of the rich, the lower classes (if you pardon the pun) loved the sight of a man actually flying. The men flying could soak in the most gentle and settled land through the supernaturally weird perspective afforded by a balloon at 1000 ft. And since the balloon flight was well and truly random, nobody could say where the trip would end. It was an attraction where everybody got a picnic, and a first rate adventure could be had without leaving Buckinghamshire on a summer's day. It even received the ultimate mark of popularity in Victorian/Edwardian Britain: women were forbidden from some aspect of it. Women could go up chaperoned in a ballo...