From Showman to Balloon Spy: The Man Who Changed How Wars Were Fought

·26 min·2 clips

Villagers accused the balloonist of being the devil for producing both ice and boiling water from his basket.

This episode tells the forgotten story of Thaddeus Lowe, a 19th-century showman who attempted to balloon across the Atlantic to prove the existence of the jet stream. After being blown off course and accidentally landing in Confederate territory at the start of the Civil War, he was accused of being a spy—which gave him the idea to pioneer aerial reconnaissance for the Union Army, changing warfare forever.

As heard by us

A balloonist's wrong turn becomes an early story of spying from the sky.

This episode stays with Thaddeus Lowe, the ballooning showman who wanted to test a theory about high-altitude winds and ended up helping open the story of spying from the sky.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Civil War origin story that starts with a balloon and ends with spying from the sky.

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