An Unusual Balloon Flight – 1910

An Unusual Balloon Flight – 1910 

   old balloon  At 1:30 p.m., on November 29, 1910, the balloon Cleveland ascended from Pittsfield, Massachusetts with four men aboard.  There was the pilot, A. L. Stevens, and with him were three passengers, L. M. Taylor, M. M. Morris, both of New York City, and S. F. Beckwith, of Garrison, N.Y.

     The balloon drifted westward and passed from Massachusetts to New York.  While over the Hudson River the aeronauts encountered a blinding snowstorm.  As if that wasn’t perilous enough, a huge flock of geese, estimated by the men to  contain a thousand birds, suddenly encountered the balloon and began bumping and scraping against it, threatening to put holes in the fabric.  The birds began to panic, for the swirling wind left them as helpless as the airmen, and for nearly an hour the flock surrounded the balloon honking and squawking the whole time.

     At one point a goose crashed into the men in the basket, where one of them captured it.

     The ordeal ended almost as suddenly as it began and the balloon landed in the town of Amenia, New York, at 5:45 p.m., 44 miles from Pittsfield.

     Source:

     Boston Evening Transcript, “Ballooning in 1910”, by William Carroll Hill, January 4, 1910.       

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