One of two observation balloons procured by Robert Falcon Scott from the the British War Office for him to use on his first polar expedition. Inflated with 8480 cubic feet (240 m³) of hydrogen and ascended with Capt. Scott on February 4, 1902, this was the first flight in Antarctica by any type of aircraft and reached a height of 244 metres – the limit of the tether. From the balloon Capt. Scott saw many parallel lines of undulation to Southward. A second ascent was then made the same day, carrying Ernest Shackleton, who took the first ever Antarctic aerial photographs, but after that the balloon developed a leak and was never flown again. The location of these flights was a small bay in the Ross Ice Barrier, near King Edward VII Land along what is now known as the Bay of Whales. The second balloon of the expedition was never flown. The name “Eva” was given to the former British Army balloon by Scott.

The first flight over the English Channel was on the 7th January 1785, between Dover and Guînes, in 2h25 carrying J.P.Blanchard and John Jeffries.

Aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard had made 66 flights in several countries, when he died in 1809 after having been hardly injured in an accident in 1808.

John Berry was a builder of balloons in St. Louis who in 1907 was slated to race his airship in the dirigible races held in conjunction with the Gordon Bennett balloon race. For unknown reasons it was never tried and no photos of it are known to exist. This photograph shows the patented airship mechanism without the gas bag.