Nov 21, 2009 – Hot air balloonists in the Rhone-Alps area of France – Pierre Jacques / Corbis

• One of the first hot air balloons, unmanned, flew from Paris to Gonesse in August of 1783…
  Where local villagers attacked and destroyed it
• So how do hot air balloons work, anyway?
  Robert Boyle knows
• On this day in 1783, two ambitious men made the first manned, untethered hot air balloon flight.
  Their balloon looked nothing like these
• These balloons are preparing to fly through a particularly delicious part of their native land.
  What land is that?

Rhône-Alpes is one of the 26 regions of France, located on the eastern border of the country, towards the south. The region was named after the Rhône River and the Alps mountain range. Its capital, Lyon, is the second-largest metropolitan area in France after Paris. Rhône-Alpes is also the 6th European economic region.

hône-Alpes is located in the east of France. To the north are the French regions of Bourgogne (Burgundy) and Franche-Comté, to the west it borders the region Auvergne, to the south it borders Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. The east of the region contains the western part of the Alps and borders Switzerland and Italy. The highest peak is Mont Blanc. The central part of the region is taken up with the valley of the Rhône and the Saône. The confluence of these two rivers is at Lyon. The western part of the region contains the start of the Massif Central mountain range. The region also borders or contains major lakes such as Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) and Lake Annecy. The Ardèche is home to the deepest gorge in Europe.
Economic center of Rhône-Alpes

As with the rest of France, French is the only official language of the region. 50 years ago, Franco-Provençal was widely spoken in the whole region. Many of the inhabitants of the south spoke varieties of Occitan although it is in steep decline in this region. There were relatively large immigrant populations from Poland, Italy, Portugal and North Africa, amongst other places.