The Balloon-Hoax

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Description

It was written by the water-loving Edgar Allan Poe himself, who had just moved to New York City and catapulted himself onto the journalistic scene by spreading a beautifully imagined and beautifully written hoax about Mr. Mason Monk’s epic balloon voyage. While Monk Mason was indeed a real person who flew a balloon from London to Germany in 1836, he did not fly a balloon across the Atlantic Ocean, and he certainly did not do it in three days. It wasn’t until 1919 that a dirigible successfully crossed the Atlantic, and it took about five days.