Really, it’s amazing how much trouble one can get into in a balloon. The first balloonists back in 1783 nearly set fire to their balloon, nearly crashed on Paris, and were lucky not to be pitch-forked by villagers mistaking them for moon men—and as you’ll find out in this book, later balloonists continued to have all sorts of hair-raising adventures. There’s the famous lady balloonist who liked to fly over Paris with lit sparklers, the rash explorers who tried to fly a balloon to the North Pole, and a surprisingly number of people who found themselves stuck in a runaway balloon on the way to who knows where. They are sometimes a nutty bunch, those balloonists, but always entertaining!