Letitia Ann Sage, the First Woman to Fly In a Hot Air Balloon and (Possibly Have Sex In It)

Let’s hop into the way-back machine and set our coordinates for 1785. This was a time way before any inkling of commercial air travel and the frisky little concept of ducking into an airplane bathroom with a “friend” for a saucy, airborne tryst thousands of feet above the ground. But let’s be realistic — people have had the very same frisky thoughts, because if the thought of sex didn’t occur to people, the human race would end. So, yes, even in the more “proper” and “modest” of times, people had sexual intercourse and in a variety of locations. In the case of actress and model Letitia Ann Sage, a hot air balloon. At least that’s what was rumored to have happened (even if it probably didn’t.) Hey, if you’re going to be stuck up in the air for a while, and the guy who is accompanying you is friendly and handsome, then “when in Rome,” amirite?

First, we’ll travel back a bit to 1784, when aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi, who was 22, dashing, and ambitious, headed to London and asked for royal permission to demonstrate a manned flight of a hot air balloon. He performed this feat in front of a crowd of 200,000, and along with his partner George Biggin, he earned himself a slew of fans and admirers.

One of those fans was one Letitia Ann Sage, celebrated by 18th century London for her beauty and acting skills. Lunardi invited Sage aboard his hot air balloon for his next planned flight in June of 1785, and she graciously accepted. But there were a couple of things to be considered when trying to fly a hot air balloon containing more than just one passenger. Like a weight issue. And, if a woman was going to be on board, a modesty issue; no one wanted to see Sage exposing her self while climbing into the balloon’s basket. So, that was an easy fix — a curtain allowing her to walk right into the basket. That would also allow for a nice picture to be taken with the two men and Sage inside.

Then there was the weight issue. Lunardi miscalculated Sage’s weight, which she proudly claimed was 200 pounds. (Things were different in 1785.) While trying to get the basket off the ground, the basket “dipped,” and Lunardi stepped out, suddenly decreasing the amount of weight in the basket, and letting the balloon take flight with Sage and Biggin inside, the curtain still open. Sage provided the following version of the timeline of events:

Sage didn’t lose her head, despite the swaying of the basket during the ascent. She simply knelt down and re-fastened the curtain securely. Biggin steadied her. At least that was the official story. People on the ground saw something that seemed to them a great deal more suggestive.

What they saw was Sage returning with a “strained tendon,” being carried back to the field where takeoff took place (by a local student and Lunardi fan), and people just assumed that some sort of funny business took place in the basket. Sage could never live it down. It wasn’t a career-ending rumor or anything like that, but just a running joke that the first woman to fly in a hot air balloon appeared to have been engaging in something kind of saucy. And it was the suggestion of something saucy that led people to place bets on whether or not they’d hop into a hot air ballon with a willing participant and do the nasty hundreds a feet in the air.

Well, there was no internet, so they had to do something to fill the time.

(Georgian London via io9)