Word: rozier
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Sept. 19, 1783, at Versailles, the first aeronauts--a sheep, a rooster and a duck--take to the sky in the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloon. On Nov. 21, Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes drift over Paris in a Montgolfier, achieving the first manned free flight (2). Asked what good are balloons, U.S. envoy Ben Franklin replies, "What good is a newborn baby?" The English Channel is crossed in 1785, and ballooning soon becomes the stuff of daredevils (3). But in 1794 the world's first air force is born: warring France uses tethered balloons...