"Sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a reason." Seinfeld, Jerry

Regular readers of this feature will know that I have a soft spot for the incorrigible enthusiasts for hot air balloons, dirigibles and all those lighter-than-air craft that preceded the airplane, were rudely shoved aside by it, and yet whose backers continue to dream. You just can’t keep a hot air balloon down.

It is also remarkable that for some reason the French were especially keen enthusiasts. I won’t make any hot air jokes here. But I will note that French pioneers included Jean-Pierre Blanchard, who in 1785 boldly demonstrated the value of a parachute in escaping a troubled hot-air balloon by … um… throwing his dog out wearing one. (See "It Happened Today" for October 22, 2016.) Dogs being what they are, the pooch was probably enthusiastic about it. But I do not suggest you try it with a cat or it may well sharpen its claws on your balloon before your next flight. Or on you as you seek to ease it out of the contraption or into the parachute.)

Blanchard's interest in the subject of escaping alive from a balloon gone bad was doubtless stimulated by his own very nearly lethal trip from Dover to Calais on January 7 of 1785 in which (see "It Happened Today" for January 7, 2016) he and his co-lunatic only escaped a plunge into the Channel en route by jettisoning all the ballast they could think of including Blanchard’s pants. And the danger was very real; an effort by another Frenchman, Pilâtre de Rozier, to cross the Channel the other way later that year ended in a fatal crash.

Well, on January 9, 1793, Blanchard was at it again. No, I don’t mean the animal cruelty stuff or the mid-air striptease. I mean a historic balloon flight. The first in the Americas, taking off from the yard of Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia and reaching Deptford in New Jersey. Which may not sound like the acme of glamour. But in fact the flight was witnessed by America’s first, incumbent President George Washington along with her future 2nd president John Adams, 3rd president Thomas Jefferson, 4th president James Madison and 5th president James Monroe.

Sadly, Blanchard suffered a heart attack and fell from a balloon in the Hague in 1808 and died about a year later from his injuries. And his widow continued ballooning demonstrations until she too died in an accident. And it’s also sad to see how France, which was somehow still a world leader in many ways at the turn of the 19th century despite a long tradition of bad government that was about to get worse, has gradually faded as excessive if no longer vicious government seems gradually to have stifled much of the French genius for bold innovation.

Obviously ballooning continues to have adherents, and I cannot look up on a beautiful day and watch balloons cruising over Ottawa without wishing I were in one. But given all the passionate commitment, interest and courage that went into their early development I do hope that one day that somehow the first and most graceful form of manned flight will become more important relative to the dominant, convenient but loud and increasingly tawdry airplane travel that dominates today.

Who knows? Maybe they'll even serve good food. Especially if the French are involved.

On this date in history the Jamestown settlement burned down. As if they didn’t have enough problems already. Mind you it wasn’t much of a settlement back on January 7 of 1608. Basically a fort full of fools who didn’t know where they were, how to grow crops or almost anything else you’d want in the old tool kit if you were, say, moving to a new continent in the age of sail.

Be that as it may, there was a lot more there before the fort burned down than afterward. For instance a fort in which to take refuge if the locals attacked you because of something you had done like steal from them or lie to them or show up looking ominous, or just because they had a habit of attacking anyone handy. (Correct answer: all of the above; despite PC versions the first deadly aboriginal attack occurred within two weeks of their arrival.)

Undaunted, they rebuilt the fort and lounged about in it during the "starving time" in which nearly everybody died after eating boot soup (less from the quality of the boots than the insufficient quantity) and various expeditions from England brought more food and more fools. Indeed, just five days before the fire a ship showed up without enough food and 70 more mouths to feed.

Nevertheless John Smith did pull them through the worst of the crisis including abolishing socialism and discovering that people did more work if the benefits were fairly distributed, of all things. And Jamestown prospered and flourished and so did Virginia and then the United States with all its great virtues and some scary defects.

It remains amazing that such a ludicrous venture could in fact succeed despite everything from bad preparation if any to the hostility of the far more numerous locals to choosing a swamp as your ideal site to the worst drought in 700 years to carelessness with fire in your only building. As with many things in history, we should not take it for granted just because it did happen. Certainly if you’d been standing among the blackened timbers on January 7, 1608 you’d have been likely to say "OK, that’s it, I’ve had it, where’s the ship home?"

Only to be told it was one more thing we didn’t really think of.

"In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly." Anonymous, quoted by The Prairie Centre newsletter Vol. II Issue 3 (1995-96)

In my second video for Canadians for Energy East, a project of the Economic Education Association of Alberta, I explain what opponents should not say about them and what supporters should.

In my new video for Canadians for Energy East, a project of the Economic Education Association of Alberta, I explain why Energy East is the right practical answer to the actual choices we face in energy policy in Canada.

"There are few words which are used more loosely than the word 'Civilization.' What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization— and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all." Winston Churchill in 1938, quoted in Daniel Hannan Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor." Adrian Pierce Rogers in his 1996 Ten Secrets for a Successful Family (frequently misattributed online, incidentally)