The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: November twenty-first, remembering two first flights.

In these days of quick transcontinental airline travel, we'd like to recall the anniversaries of two notable aeronautical achievements.

History records that on November 21st, 1783, Jean Francois de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes became the first humans to fly, when they ascended in a hot air balloon built by two brothers, Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier. That first flight lasted about 25 minutes and carried the two passengers six miles over the city of Paris, drifting at the dizzying height of 300 feet. Among the amazed spectators was one Benjamin Franklin, the newly appointed American ambassador to France.

The second event took place 152 years later in San Francisco harbor on the afternoon of November 22, 1935. Captain Edwin Musick of Pan American Airways pushed forward the throttle of his Martin 130 flying boat. The ungainly craft, christened the China Clipper only a few weeks earlier, carried a crew of five and a ton of mail. Nearly 20,000 people had gathered by the bay to see off this first attempt to fly across the Pacific Ocean. The crowd included Juan Trippe, Pan Am's flamboyant founder. Millions more listened on live radio broadcast around the globe.

When the China Clipper finally landed in Manilla Harbor some 60 hours, 8,000 miles and five re-fueling stops later, 300,000 Filipinos were on hand to greet them. In its day, the trans-Pacific flight was considered as significant an achievement as the first lunar landing would be just 34 years later.

Man's first flight and man's first flight across the Pacific, two giant steps in the history of human ascension.

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