John Jeffries a letter he dropped from the balloon during his historic flight, considered the oldest piece of airmail in existence. He fled to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1776 and later to England 1779, and was employed by the Crown during this time. In 1785, Jeffries and Jean-Pierre Blanchard crossed the English Channel in a balloon, becoming the first human beings to cross the Channel by air. Jeffries lived in England from 1779 to 1790. Despite being named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act, he returned to private practice in Boston, staying there until his death in 1819. His son John Jeffries II
Women in aviation a passenger in an untethered hot air balloon, which flew above Lyon, France in 1784. Four years later, Jeanne Labrosse became the first woman to fly solo in a balloon and would become the first woman to parachute, as well. Sophie Blanchard took her first balloon flight in 1804, was performing as a professional aeronaut by 1810 and was made Napoleon's chief of air service in 1811. Blanchard, the first woman who was a professional in the air, died in a spectacular crash in 1819. In June 1903, Aida de Acosta, an American woman vacationing in Paris, convinced Alberto Santos-Dumont,