Hatfield, Welwyn Garden City and the surrounding villages have plenty of well-known history, but here’s seven things you might not know about our area.
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Scotland s aviation history celebrated through new RAF website and trail LARGE crowds gathered as an aeronaut ascended in a hydrogen balloon from the garden of George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh on October 5, 1785. Italian Vincenzo Lunardi flew over the Firth of Forth and landed at Coaltown of Callange in the Parish of Ceres, in Fife, and had travelled 46 miles. A commemorative plaque marks the site to this day. In a report from the time by Scots Magazine, it said: “The beauty and grandeur of the spectacle could only be exceeded by the cool, intrepid manner in which the adventurer conducted himself; and indeed he seemed infinitely more at ease than the greater part of his spectators.”
The Great British Art Tour: Mrs Sage takes to the skies with ham and hot air
With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: the Science Museum’s Mrs Sage
Portrait of the first English female aerial traveller, Mrs Letitia Ann Sage, 1785. H 77cm, W63cm. Photograph: Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
Portrait of the first English female aerial traveller, Mrs Letitia Ann Sage, 1785. H 77cm, W63cm. Photograph: Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
DrKatyBarrett,curatorofartcollections,ScienceMuseumGroup
Tue 9 Mar 2021 01.00 EST
See, we weren t making it up
If you ve ever stopped at Finsbury Park station, you may have clocked the mosaic tiles depicting vintage hot air balloons.
They look serene enough, but in truth they recall an age when
Londoners were foaming at the mouth over the latest daredevil craze. In September 1784, in Finsbury Fields, Vincenzo Lunardi became the first human to fly in England, accompanied by a confused dog, a puzzled cat and a seen-it-all-before pigeon.
After that, London was hooked.
Vincent Lunardi, the first human to fly in England, ready to ascend (1785), by John Kay
But if Lunardi s sounds like a perplexing floating menagerie, London had to wait another 68 years for the bizarrest and perhaps cruellest balloon stunt of all. It involved a seasoned French aeronaut, Madame Poitevin, and a bull and it would put a stop to the frankly demented practice of forcing animals to fly.