The Balloon Hoax

The model of the fictitious balloon used to cross the Atlantic.

The actual article that appearred in the Saturday, April 13, 1844, issue of the New York Sun.

The Balloon Hoax was a short story by Edgar Allen Poe about eight men's accidental first transatlantic voyage by air. The story was fictional, but it was published in the Saturday, April 13, 1844, issue of the New York Sun, and people believed it. The first transatlantic voyage by air didn't happen for another sixty years.