Word: ballooners
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...novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg employed all manner of transport--steamers, railways, yachts, carriages, trading vessels, sledges and even elephants. But no balloon. It was Hollywood, not Jules Verne, that sent the intrepid Brit off in that aircraft. Trivia, you say? But there was nothing trivial about the real-life fulfillment of what seemed to be quixotic fantasy last week in Northern Africa. In a 180-ft.-high balloon, a silvery dare in the air, two adventurers--Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, 41, and British balloon instructor Brian Jones, 51--completed their tour of the world...
...part, said calmly, "I am going to have a cup of tea, like any good Englishman." They had sailed into history. And they decided to sail on a little more. "We do not land. We go to Egypt," Piccard radioed air-traffic control in Senegal. "We are a balloon flying around the world." "I will be tearing their eyes out when I see them," their erstwhile rival Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, told TIME. "But apart from that, I think a hug and a bottle of champagne will be appropriate...
Since 1981 there have been nearly 20 attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. Steve Fossett, a Chicago millionaire who attempted the feat five times, plunged into the Coral Sea after traveling 14,236 miles last August. And on Christmas Day he went down again near the coast of Hawaii, taking along his partners, Per Lindstrand of Sweden and Branson. The U.S. Coast Guard fished them out at a cost--to taxpayers--of about $130,000. Setting the elusive record was worth the trouble to Fossett. "I can't tell you how it ranks with the others, like climbing...
...BALLOON] RE/MAX canceled 1/15/99...
...BALLOON] ICO/Global Challenger launched 12/18/98...