A Bunch of Balloons Trivia Quiz

Answer: An unknown gas

In China during the second and third centuries AD small unmanned hot-air balloons, known as Kongming Lanterns, had been used for military communications. However, it was only in France in the late eighteenth century that larger, passenger-carrying hot-air balloons were successfully developed by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier.

At first the Montgolfiers thought that fires sometimes gave off an unknown gas and that smoke was the visible sign it was present. Accordingly, the fires that heated the air in their first balloons were fuelled with materials, generally a mixture of straw and wool, that produced a lot of smoke. They later realised that heating the air in the balloon made it lighter than the surrounding air and this was what caused the balloon to rise.

On September 1783 three animals (a sheep, a duck and a hen) became the first passengers to fly in a Montgolfier hot-air balloon. This ascent by a full-size, tethered balloon was followed on October 15th 1783 by one carrying the first human passenger, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier. On November 21st 1783, the first manned ascent by free-flying hot-air balloon was made by de Rozier and Francois Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes. Taking off in Paris, the balloon ascended to over 300 feet/90 metres and flew at least 5 miles/8 kilometres in some 25 minutes.

The Montgolfier balloon envelopes were made of cloth, sometimes lined with paper coated with alum, and the passengers stood on a circular walkway below the envelope. The air inside the envelope was heated by a fire on a grill between the walkway and the envelope. As happened to de Rozier and Laurent, sparks from this fire sometimes landed on the balloon envelope, and had to be extinguished by the pilots.

Answer: True

In the UK in 1766 Henry Cavendish wrote about his discovery of hydrogen, the lightest gas, and in 1767 Joseph Black demonstrated that a small balloon filled with this gas would rise. A few years later in France, at the same time as the Montgolfier brothers were experimenting with hot-air balloons, Professor Jacques Alexandre Charles, assisted by the Robert brothers, developed a larger hydrogen-filled balloon capable of carrying passengers.

After trials using tethered, then free-flying, unmanned balloons, Professor Charles and Marie-Noel Robert made the first manned flight by free-flying gas balloon on December 1st 1783. Taking off in Paris, their balloon rose to about 2,000 feet/600 metres and travelled over 25 miles/40 kilometres to land safely in the town of Nesle over two hours later. The balloon envelope was made from silk covered with a layer of rubber and had a valve in the top to release gas, while sandbags were carried below the envelope for ballast.

Some modifications to balloon design were made in the decades that followed the first flights. For example, in 1839, John Wise added a rip panel at the top of the envelope which enabled gas/air to be released rapidly and safely when the balloonists wanted to land. However, hot-air balloons could still catch alight because hydrogen is flammable and envelopes could, and did, explode.

Better materials are now used in envelope construction and lifting power is provided by safer means, but balloons still have the same basic design as the early ones. Both gas and hot-air balloons have advantages and disadvantages. A gas balloon has greater lifting power and can fly for longer but hot-air balloonists can more easily change altitude to take advantage of favourable winds by simply adjusting the amount of heat fed into the balloon. Pilots of gas balloons must release gas slowly from the envelope to lose some altitude and gradually jettison ballast to ascend again.

Answer: A fish lizard's stomach

In the book "The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a number of people became trapped on an isolated plateau overlooking the Brazilian plains. Also trapped on the plateau were early human cave-dwellers, ape people and different kinds of dinosaurs.

The book was first published in 1912 and has been adapted, often very freely, into several films with the first one, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and starring Wallace Beery, being released in 1925. A three-season television series inspired by the book was originally shown in the US between 1999 and 2002 and began with the travellers becoming trapped on the plateau when their hot-air balloon crashed.

However, in the book, the trapped party tried to escape from the plateau by balloon. Professor Challenger devised an envelope made from the dried and scraped stomach of an enormous 'fish lizard' and inflated it with hydrogen gas from a geyser. Unfortunately, its lifting power was stronger than Challenger calculated and the envelope rose into the air before its basket was attached. The rope intended to moor it was wrapped around Challenger's arm and he, as well as two other people, were lifted off their feet. Fortunately the rope broke and they fell to earth unharmed although the balloon shot up and away without them.

In real life too, balloonists have either underestimated or been unaware of the lifting power of balloons. On December 1st 1783, after the first manned gas balloon to fly had landed, Jacques Charles then made a solo flight in the partially-deflated balloon. Unexpectedly, it quickly rose to nearly 10,000 feet/3,000 metres, five times higher than the preceding flight, and Charles reportedly found it difficult to breathe in the thin atmosphere. He eventually landed safely but, whether or not coincidentally, never flew again.

Answer: The English Channel

Blanchard was a French professional balloonist and Jeffries was an American doctor who sponsored the journey. The crossing by gas balloon took place on January 7th 1785, when the balloonists ascended from cliffs at Dover in England and landed safely some two hours later in a wood near Calais in France.

During the flight, the balloon lost more gas than expected and they were forced to jettison not only ballast but also their equipment and clothing to try to prevent it from descending into the sea. Despite this, the balloon was nearly touching the waves when, fortunately, they met a favourable wind near France which lifted the balloon up and enabled them to complete their journey.

After he and Jeffries crossed the Channel, Blanchard made the first balloon flights in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia. Later, on January 9th 1793, he made the first manned balloon flight in the US. Watched by a large crowd, which included President George Washington, his gas balloon took off from a prison yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and reached a height of some 5800 feet/1770 metres. After a journey lasting some 45 minutes he landed safely in Deptford, Gloucester County, New Jersey.

Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, the first person to fly in a Montgolfier hot-air balloon, invented a third type of balloon which consisted of a gas balloon with a separate hot-air cylinder balloon attached underneath it. De Rozier developed this hybrid in the latter part of 1874, intending to cross the Channel in it, but delays meant he was only able to begin the journey from Boulogne-sur-Mer in France on June 15th 1785. Unfortunately, he was less successful than Blanchard and Jeffries as he soon met adverse winds and then the envelope(s) caught fire and the balloon crashed in France, killing de Rozier and his companion, Pierre Romain.

Answer: Toto ran off

Dorothy and the Wizard constructed a hot-air balloon, but when it was ready to depart, Toto ran into the watching crowd and Dorothy had to fetch him. She returned to find the Wizard in the basket and the balloon straining on its mooring rope. Before Dorothy could get into the basket, the mooring rope went crack and Wizard was unable to stop the balloon from rising quickly into the air and flying away.

L. Frank Baum's book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was first published in 1900 and he then adapted it into a successful stage musical, which was first performed in 1902. Several film adaptations of the book have been made with the third version, released in 1939 and starring Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, the best-known.

In the book, the Wizard had been employed to go aloft in a balloon to attract a crowd to a circus. One day the balloon's ropes had twisted so that he couldn't descend but was carried by air currents for a day and a night before landing in Oz. In real life, balloons were a popular attraction at fairs, carnivals and in pleasure-gardens until the late nineteenth century, whilst long-distance cross-country flights were sometimes undertaken. For instance, with the help of co-pilots, John Wise, who had been a balloonist at county fairs, flew a gas balloon some 1,150 miles/1,850 kilometres from St Louis, Missouri to Henderson, Jefferson County, New York in 1859, setting what was then a distance record for travel by balloon.

Though a hot-air balloon featured in Baum's book, gas balloons predominated in real life and, especially from the 1890s until 1914 (when World War One started), gas balloons were used for sports ballooning, just as hot air balloons are now. After Charles Green started the practice in London in July 1821, it became fairly common to use cheaper town gas instead of hydrogen, although it was just as flammable and was also denser, so provided less lifting power.

Answer: They did not travel by balloon

"Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne was first published in December 1872 and has been made into several films. The best-known are probably the 1956 version starring David Niven and Cantinflas, and the 2004 adaptation starring Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan. In both these films, the travellers journeyed onwards from Paris in a hot-air balloon.

In contrast, the characters did not travel by balloon in the book. In 1869, shortly before Verne wrote the book, an eighty-day itinerary for a real round-the-world trip appeared both in the periodical "Le Tour du Monde" and in the book, "Nouvelles Annales", written by the geographers Conrad and Victor Malte-Brun. In later interviews Verne acknowledged the influence of these publications and his characters broadly followed the real-life suggested itinerary.

Balloon travel was only mentioned in the book when Verne/the narrator stated that crossing the Atlantic in this way would be not only risky but impossible. In fact, the first real-life attempt was made a year later in 1873 when Messrs Donaldson, Ford and Hunt took off from the New York area in a gas balloon. After travelling only about 45 miles, they met a storm and the balloon fell into Long Island Sound, although the balloonists were rescued.

Long-distance overseas journeys only became feasible nearly a hundred years later after technological advances enabled the building of better and safer balloons. From the 1950s, Ed Yost of the US modernised the hot-air balloon, pioneering the use of propane-fuelled burners and light-weight synthetic fabric for the envelopes. After the First World War, popular ballooning had virtually disappeared, but Yost's work reawakened interest in sports ballooning, although now hot-air, rather than gas, balloons are generally used.

Yost was also among those designing modern gas balloons, which generally use plastic material for the envelope and use helium instead of hydrogen. Although helium is denser than hydrogen and so provides less lifting power, it is non-flammable and thus safer.

Answer: False

Before this successful flight in 1978, thirteen sets of balloonists were recorded as having attempted the journey. Most were forced to land in the sea, often not very far into the journey, either by storms or through equipment failure. Two flights vanished over the Atlantic and in total five balloonists lost their lives.

Although the first attempt was made in 1873, the second one only took place in 1958 when the balloon Small World took off from Tenerife and travelled nearly halfway across the Atlantic before a storm forced it down. Piloted by Colin and Rosemary Mudie and Arnold and Tim Eiloart from the UK, this balloon was the only one of the thirteen to travel from east to west, against the direction of the prevailing winds.

Most of the other attempts were made in the 1970s and the fourteenth balloon to attempt the crossing, the eleven-storey helium-filled balloon Double Eagle II, designed by Ed Yost, ascended from Presque Isle, Maine on August 11th 1978. The crew of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman from New Mexico utilised a favourable west to east high-pressure mass of air and crossed the coastline of Ireland on August 16th. However, they continued their journey and eventually landed near the village of Miserey, some 60 miles/96 kilometres north of Paris, on August 17th. In total their journey lasted 137 hours and 16 minutes. (The information given so far is based mainly on an article in the December 1978 issue of the "National Geographic".)

It was several years before the first hot-air balloon, piloted by Per Lindstrand from Sweden and Richard Branson from the UK, crossed the Atlantic from Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine to Limvady in Northern Ireland in July 1987. Before that, in September 1984, Joseph Kittinger from the US had made the first solo crossing from Caribou, Maine to Savona in Italy in a gas balloon.

Once the Atlantic had been crossed, balloonists then attempted a nonstop crossing of the Pacific. The helium-filled Double Eagle V, this time piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, Ron Clark and Rocky Aoki, made the first successful crossing in 1981. The balloon left Nagashimi in Japan on November 10th and landed in Mendocino National Forest in California 84 hours and 31 minutes later.

Per Lindstrand and Richard Branson were the first to cross this ocean by hot-air balloon as well, flying from Japan to Northern Canada in January 1991. Steve Fossett from the US later made the first solo crossing, travelling from South Korea to Canada in February 1995.

Answer: Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones

All the people mentioned in the question were among those involved in attempts to circumnavigate the world nonstop by balloon and most of the attempts were made during the 1990s. Larry Newman led the Earthwinds Hilton team, which made various unsuccessful attempts in the first half of the decade, travelling in a helium-filled balloon and using a separate air-filled balloon as ballast.

Per Lindstrand and Richard Branson, accompanied by a third pilot, made four attempts between 1995 and 1998 in Virgin Global Challenger balloons. Their fourth, most successful flight, with Steve Fossett as the third pilot, ended when they were forced to land in the Pacific in December 1998, having travelled more than halfway around the globe from their starting point in Morocco, north Africa.

In January 1997 the first Breitling Orbiter balloon, whose pilots included the Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, was forced to land only a few hours into its journey. Twelve months later Breitling Orbiter 2 travelled for nearly ten days from Switzerland until it was forced to land in Burma for political reasons.

Piloted by Piccard and by Brian Jones from the UK, Breitling Orbiter 3 ascended from Chateau d'Oex in the Swiss Alps on March 1st 1999. This time the circumnavigation attempt was successful and the balloon crossed the 'finishing line' in Mauritania, northwest Africa, after flying for 19 days, 1 hour and 49 minutes. When it landed in Egypt some twenty hours later on March 21st 1999, the balloon had travelled more than 25,400 miles/40,800 kilometres.

From 1996 onwards Steve Fossett attempted to be the first to fly nonstop around the world solo and finally succeeded on his sixth attempt in the balloon Spirit Of Freedom in July 2002. Like the Virgin Global Challenger and Breitling Orbiter crews, Fossett used an updated hybrid Rozier balloon (as he had for his solo Pacific crossing in February 1995).

In the 1980s, Donald Cameron had modernised de Rozier's original hybrid balloon to produce a large helium-filled balloon with a smaller hot-air balloon attached below it. In a gas balloon, the gas contracts at night as it cools and ballast must be jettisoned to prevent the balloon from sinking. The next day gas then needs to be valved out to prevent the lighter balloon from rising too high. In the modern Rozier balloon, the hot-air balloon - and hence the helium balloon above it - is heated at night, so preserving the balloon's height while conserving its resources, and thus lengthening its flying time.

Answer: Helium

Mike Howard from the UK had made a previous similar ascent for the "Guinness Book of World Records" television show in 1998 but had only managed to reach about 3,000 feet. The 2001 flight by Howard and by Steve Davis of the US took place on August 4th 2001 near Albuquerque, New Mexico and they were deemed to have reached a world record height, according to an entry in the "Guinness World Records 2008" book. Although some of the helium-filled balloons were a few feet in diameter, they were officially classed as party balloons.

The use of clusters of gas balloons was started in the US by Jean Piccard, who was carried to over 10,000 feet/3,000 metres in 1937 by 98 larger latex rubber balloons. Among other people to attain high altitudes using clusters of larger balloons was John Ninomiya from the US, who flew to some 21,000 feet/6,400 metres on October 18th 1998.

Sitting in a lawn chair attached to over 40 large helium-filled balloons on July 2nd 1982, Larry Walters of the US intended to float 100 feet into the air and stay there for a while. However, as Jacques Charles, one of the first two people to travel by gas balloon, had done in 1783, Walters underestimated the balloons' lifting power and his conveyance quickly rose to a height of some 16,000 feet/4,900 metres over Long Beach, California. Although Walters eventually managed to descend unharmed by shooting some of the balloons, he was arrested by the police and later fined for violating US Federal Aviation Regulations.

Walters' voyage inspired Ken Couch from Oregon to attempt to fly 200 miles into the next state using the same methods of transport and descent. He succeeded on his third attempt on July 5th 2008, when he travelled 235 miles in a nine-hour journey from his home in Bend, Oregon to a field in Idaho, carried by more than 150 helium-filled balloons.

Answer: Winnie the Pooh

"The Hungry Caterpillar" is a book by Eric Carle, Charlie Bucket appears in the books "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator", both by Roald Dahl, and the Wizard is in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", written by L. Frank Baum.

In the first chapter of the book "Winnie-The-Pooh", written by A. A. Milne and published in 1926, Pooh was trying to get honey from a bees' nest high in a tree. He was lifted into the air by a toy balloon and then floated motionless some distance from the tree. To help convince the bees he was a rain cloud, he sang the following song:

How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!
Every little cloud
Always sings aloud.

'How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!'
It makes him very proud
To be a little cloud.

Unfortunately for Pooh, his cunning plan didn't work and he didn't get the honey. He was only able to return to earth when Christopher Robin shot the balloon with his pop gun and it descended gradually.

This balloon episode was the first of Pooh's adventures to be made into an animated film by Walt Disney Productions and was released in 1966 as "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree". Somewhat embarrassingly, thinking about this cartoon is what gave me the idea for creating a quiz about balloons. In doing so I've learned a lot about ballooning and I hope you've learned something new as well.