How to Hear Yourself Living

Watercolor by Clare Dunn

“When I felt myself escaping from the earth … my reaction was not pleasure but happiness. It was ‘a moral feeling.' I could hear myself living, so to speak.”

— Dr. Jacques A.C. Charles, the 18^th century French inventor, scientist and mathematician who, at 2:45 p.m. Dec. 1, 1783, became the world’s first hydrogen balloonist.