First to Fly
Not the Wright Brothers.
The Wright Brothers were not the first to fly. Rather, the Wrights were the first in a very specific category of flying; using a craft that was: 1) heavier than air, 2) self powered, 3) capable of sustained flight, and 4) controllable.
Flying was old news by the the Wright brothers built their plane.
This was no small feat; and we should not minimize the Wrights’ genius. But there are other ways to fly.
Human flight was actually accomplished more than 100 years before the Wrights, when a hot air balloon with two people went aloft on November 21, 1783 in Paris.
The balloon was invented by the Montgolfier brothers, of France—with the very French first names of Jacques-Étienne and Joseph-Michel. But neither was in the ballon for the first-ever untethered flight.
Choosing the first person to fly was considered the domain of the king, and France’s Louis the XVI decreed that the first aeronaut would be selected from a list of prisoners facing execution by guillotine. Louis saw flying as a form of extreme punishment, which of course, it still is today.
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier
In order to attract potential aeronauts, Louis added an incentive: if the prisoner survived the flight, he would receive a full pardon. But before the 'flying felon' plan could be implemented, a scientist named Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, insisted he receive the honor of being first to fly, despite the danger. The king acquiesced
The historic flight of de Rozier and his companion François Laurent d'Arlandes was trouble-free. But then de Rozier scaled up faster than was advisable. Within months, de Rozier was flying to an altitude of 10,000 feet. In 1784, he set out to cross the English channel in a balloon that used both hot air and hydrogen. No one was overly concerned that the flame from the hot air burner might ignite the the highly-explosive hydrogen. Not long after takeoff, the the balloon burst into flames. Luckily, parachutes had been invented a year earlier. Unluckily, de Rozier did not have one. He fell thousands of feet to his death.
Nine years later, Louis XVI was sentenced to the guillotine. But there is no evidence he was given the option of escaping execution by taking a balloon flight.