In 1908, the winners of the Gordon Bennett Cup in ballooning set a world record of 73 hours aloft that would stand until 1995. What nationality were they?
Gordon Bennett Cup (ballooning) interrupted by World War I and in 1931, but was suspended in 1939 when the hosts, Poland, were invaded at the start of World War II. The event was not resurrected until 1979, when American Tom Heinsheimer, an atmospheric physicist, gained permission from the holders to host the trophy. The competition was not officially reinstated by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) until 1983. The record time for the winner of the event is held by Germans Wilhelm Eimers and Bernd Landsmann who remained airborne for over 92 hours in the 1995 race, taking off from Switzerland and landing four days
Gordon Bennett Cup (ballooning) Both the men and their instruments survived intact. The winners of the 1910 Gordon Bennett Cup, Alan R. Hawley and Augustus Post, set a distance and duration record of 1,173 miles in 44 hours and 25 minutes, but the pair of experienced balloonists landed in a remote section of Canadian wilderness in Quebec. After a week passed with no word from the team, search parties were formed by the Aero Club of America, but many newspapers reported that the men were likely dead. Instead they emerged after ten days, assisted by two local trappers who had been out on a