(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing 10/22/25: Geronimo! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2025-10-22 288 years ago today (and 106 years before the first airplane flight) the first parachute jump was made and survived. The first parachute jump in history was made on 22 October 1797 by Frenchman André-Jacques Garnerin above Parc Monceau, Paris. He used a silk parachute to descend approximately 3,000 feet (910 m) from a hot air balloon. Garnerin first thought of the idea while wanting to escape from prison. Leonardo da Vinci conceived the idea of the parachute in his writings, and the Frenchman Louis-Sebastien Lenormand fashioned a kind of parachute out of two umbrellas and jumped from a tree in 1783, but André-Jacques Garnerin was the first to design and test parachutes capable of slowing a man’s fall from a high altitude. Garnerin first conceived of the possibility of using air resistance to slow an individual’s fall from a high altitude while a prisoner during the French Revolution. Although he never employed a parachute to escape from the high ramparts of the Hungarian prison where he spent three years, Garnerin never lost interest in the concept of the parachute. In 1797, he completed his first parachute, a canopy 23 feet in diameter and attached to a basket with suspension lines. On October 22, 1797, Garnerin attached the parachute to a hydrogen balloon and ascended to an altitude of 3,200 feet. He then clambered into the basket and severed the parachute from the balloon. As he failed to include an air vent at the top of the prototype, Garnerin oscillated wildly in his descent, but he landed shaken but unhurt half a mile from the balloon’s takeoff site. In 1799, Garnerin’s wife, Jeanne-Genevieve, became the first female parachutist. In 1802, Garnerin made a spectacular jump from 8,000 feet during an exhibition in England. He died in a balloon accident in 1823 while preparing to test a new parachute. The parachute was much different than today’s. However, it was a very different concept from today's idea of a parachute. Instead of a nylon mattress shaped parachute packed in a bag and attached to his back with a harness, he developed a 7m-wide parachute that folded up like an umbrella, using rigid ribs in an envelope of silk. Below the parachute he attached a basket, similar to ballooning baskets of today. Then, he attached the whole lot to hot air balloon. He rose to an altitude of 3,000ft above the ground hanging below the balloon in his wicker basket, the parachute folded like an umbrella above him. At that height he severed the cord that held them together. Falling, the canopy opened, took his weight, and slowly descended to the ground. However, there was not that much, if any, control. The parachute reportedly suffered from a severe pendulum effect, caused by air spilling out from beneath it in an uncontrolled way, and his landing was heavy. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/10/22/2348923/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-10-22-25-Geronimo?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/