3-056-200 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

Balloon Ascents by the World-Renowned Leona Dare, 1880. '...under the direction of the Aeronaut, Signor Eduardo Spelterini'. Advertisement for a stage act. American trapeze artist and aerial acrobat Leona Dare (c1855-1922) worked with Swiss balloonist Eduard Spelterini. He would take her, suspended under the basket of his balloon, to great heights (some sources speak of 5,000 feet), while she performed her acrobatics. Her specialty was 'iron jaw', in which she held onto her supporting apparatus with nothing but the strength of her bite. Dare and Spelterini's ascents in June and July 1888 at the Crystal Palace in London made them world-famous.