A closer look
French inventors launched the world's very first hot air balloon passengers in 1783, consisting of a highly confused sheep, a duck, and a rooster. The Montgolfier brothers wanted to test the effects of altitude on living creatures before risking human lives, logically selecting a duck because it was already used to being in the sky, and a sheep because its physiology was supposedly similar to a human. The animals survived the two-mile flight completely unharmed, though they were probably deeply traumatized by being forcefully strapped into a wicker basket beneath a flaming bag of silk. This paved the way for human aviation, entirely because a farm animal proved that ascending into the clouds would not spontaneously vaporize your lungs
