Sophie Blanchard, aka Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard or Marie Sophie Armant (1778-1819), was a French aeronaut and an accomplished professional ball

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Sophie Blanchard, aka Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard or Marie Sophie Armant (1778-1819), was a French aeronaut and an accomplished professional balloon pilot. She was appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte and later Louis XVIII as the Official Aeronaut. She specialised in inflight firework displays, and on July 6 1819, at one of her twice-weekly shows at the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, her hydrogen gas-filled balloon was ignited by the fireworks and she fell to her death onto a rooftop in the rue de Provence and then fell into the street. She was the widow of the balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard. She was the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident.

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Photo credit: © SHEILA TERRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: accident, aeronaut, aviation, balloonist, blanchard, dealth, death, display, female, fire, firework, fireworks, french, gardens, hydrogen, ignition, killed, louis, napoleon, paris, pilot, sophie, tivoli, xlll