Nowadays, the most courageous among us jump in parachute for their pleasure. But when this crazy act was first attempted, it wasn't a hobby or a sport, but a means of survival. Looking back, it takes a lot of determination to jump from such a height for the very first time in history! André Jacques Garnerin, a Frenchman, is the man who first parachuted, with a specific purpose, a test to leave a hot air balloon in a hurry, just above the Parc Monceau, in Paris!
And this first jump takes us back in time, on October 22, 1797, in a time when the Revolution was still rumbling. It was a period when technological advances were beginning to resurface, after the Terror, notably that of Jacques Charles, who invented the gas balloon, the ancestor of the hot air balloon. André Jacques Garnerin, who was his pupil, was then a balloonist, in charge of directing the balloons in the sky of the capital. This will lead him to jump by parachute, at the age of 28, by throwing himself from a hot air balloon, at nearly 1000m high!
As for Garnerin, he saw the parachute as a means of emergency escape from a hot air balloon, should it catch fire or fail. Since this experiment was announced and publicized, it attracted many visitors to the Parc Monceau, then far from the center of Paris, who expected to see it crash and die, obviously. But no, André was only slightly injured, with a simple sprain in his leg! A miracle for the time, and above all a world first, very French!
You can find a commemorative plaque in the park, alley Jacques Garnerin, installed in 1997 to celebrate the 200 years of the jump!
