Your safety and enjoyment are utmost in our mind and we have another legal obligation to get through so if you bear with us. This is the 1790 Tullamore Balloon Act. Firstly, rather than stating boring legal clauses we will try to help you understand why such a law exists.
The Bury Family who built the castle were well know socialites and famous among the upper classes of then Ireland for their parties. At a previous party in the country mansion which occupied the site of today’s castle they held many parties. About 30 years before the castle was completed at one of these famous parties they decided to wow all their guests with the latest thing, a hot air balloon and this party went on to make history and set a world record for being the first.
Yes, so cool were the Bury family that less than two years after the Montgolfier Brothers famously demonstrated their flying ballon to the great and the good of Paris. The Bury’s had one in Ireland as a party piece. Typical Irish really, major scientific and technology breakthrough in Paris and they go, ‘jaysus let’s get one of them it will be great craic for the parties’.
On a fateful day in 1785, probably a little worse for drink some guests of the Bury family got into a balloon and took off from a field near the old mansion and drifted towards the then town of Tullamore. How they must have been giggling with excitement at this amazing experience, drinking and shouting at the peasants below. When something went wrong, the balloon went out of control and landed on houses along the main street of the town, called Patrick’s Street.
The now out of control balloon was dragged in the wind across the tops of several thatched cottages hot coals spilling from its overturned basket, whilst all the passengers jumped for safety onto the low cottage roofs. In the resulting fire over 100 houses burned to the ground over half the then town. Somehow, no one was killed in the fire, and as compensation, the Bury Family rebuilt the town and compensated the families for their lost belongings.
Thus Tullamore holds the world record for being the first recorded aviation disaster, and the Town’s Coat of Arms was changed to a phoenix to commemorate the rebuilding of the town.
After this, all hot air balloons were banned in a local law and we are telling you this because we know about a certain breed of tango person. The Expert. Experts tend to spout lots of hot air when talking about their unique understanding of tango, how they feel the music in ways you just couldn’t understand or name the maestros that have asked them for tips. This hot air is the ideal fuel for modern Hot Air Balloons.
We have been aware of compliance with this law from the start and no one in the facebook group is such a windbag, as we have filtered these Experts out. There is though still a risk that a windbag might have got through. So before any of you bright sparks get the ingenious idea to travel here by hot air balloon fuelled by such a windbag tango expert, it is fecking banned since 1790.
Of course, you are thinking this is all hot air I am spouting, so why don’t you Google Hot Air Balloon and Tullamore yourself.
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Posted by Anthony. Updated 17 November 2021.
