Page 15 - Demo

other flight was the brainchild of a New Jersey First Day Cover collector, Charles Thatcher. He organized this event with the help of the Balloon Club of America, with the goal of making First Day Covers flown by balloon available to fellow collectors%u2014and to sell enough of them to cover his expenses.Thatcher%u2019s balloon was a famous one%u2014La Coquette, which had been featured in the movie, Around the World in 80 Days. It was piloted by Peter Pellegrino and Tony Fairbanks. At 12:30 p.m., the balloon was filled with gas, and was ready to fly at Halsmer Airport. Soon, Thatcher arrived from the Lafayette Post Office with 1,500 covers. Regrettably, because of a malfunctioning canceling machine, not all the covers had been processed.At 1:12 p.m., La Coquette rose up into strong winds. After a flight of an hour and twenty-two minutes, and a distance of 22 miles, Pellegrino and Fairbanks brought the balloon down near Camden, just northeast of Lafayette. There, Thatcher, who had been following the balloon in an automobile, retrieved the covers and frantically drove back to the Lafayette Post Office so the un-serviced ones could receive their missing First Day of Issue cancellations.Thatcher sold his covers by mail-order to collectors at $2.50 apiece for those with a single stamp, and $5.00 each for those with a plate block of four. Covers with the plate block were signed by both pilots%u2014Pellegrino and Fairbanks. The singlestamped covers were not autographed. %u2022 To cover his expenses, Professor Wise had been promised $800 for making his ascent, but only collected $650. In 1878, he died at age 71 when he and a companion went down in a balloon in Lake Michigan. His friend%u2019s body eventually washed ashore, but Wise%u2019s was never recovered.%u2022 There is no record of what became of the Jupiter, although in 1959, a Lafayette woman by the name of Bella Noble claimed to own a piece of its fabric.%u2022 Only a single letter%u2014addressed to W.H. Munn%u2014is known to have survived from the Jupiter%u2019s historic 1859 flight. After residing in the collection of a prominent Ohio collector, it was purchased at auction by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in 1964 for $6,500.%u2022 Donald Piccard continued to actively promote ballooning. In fact, in 1963 he and Ed Yost flew La Coquette, the balloon featured in the movie, Around the World in 80 Days, was in Lafayette as an unofficial part of Operation Jupiter.