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attaining extremely high altitudes. On November 26, 2005 Vijaypat Singhania set a world record by reaching 68,986 ft.%u2014more than 13 miles%u2014after lifting off from Mumbai, India. He traveled about 150 miles to the south and landed safely.In 1999, Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, and Britain%u2019s Brian Jones, made the first nonstop trip around the world by hot-air balloon. Steve Fossett, flying solo, broke their record by circumambulating the Earth in 320 hours 33 minutes in 2002. Then Fedor Konyukhov, also flying solo, performed the same feat in a hybrid hot-air/helium balloon in 2016 in 268 hours 20 minutes. Today, hot-air balloons are used primarily for recreation and advertising, and are known as Montgolfier-type balloons. John Wise%u2019s Jupiter is credited with carrying the first official air mail approved by the United States Post Office in 1859. Jean-Pierre Blanchard and Dr. John Jeffries unofficially carried a letter in a balloon across the English Channel from Britain to France in 1785. In 1793, Blanchard took off from Philadelphia in the first balloon flight in America, and landed in New Jersey%u2014carrying a letter given him by President George Washington, who watched the balloon take off. Though also unofficial, it was actually the first mail in the United States transported by air.Wise%u2019s Indiana air-mail flight from Lafayette to Crawfordsville was, indeed, historic, but he had actually carried mail aloft 6 weeks earlier when he flew his balloon Atlantic from St. Louis, Missouri to Henderson, New York. Toward the end of that 809-mile flight, in order to avoid being dragged under the waves of Lake Ontario during a windstorm, Wise was forced to toss all his ballast overboard%u2014including the mailbag. Addressed to an agent of the U.S. Express Company, it was also unofficial mail and, fortunately, was washed ashore after the storm.One of the most daring episodes in mail delivery by balloon occurred during the Franco-Prussian War. When Paris was totally surrounded by Otto von Bismarck%u2019s troops, and completely cut off from the rest of Europe, French balloonists were able to sail out of their besieged city carrying mail to the outside world. Often, they took cages of carrier pigeons with them so the birds could