More than a century before the Wright Brothers, a Bladensburg innkeeper made a sometimes-overlooked chapter in aviation history by successfully launching the first unmanned and manned hot air balloon ascensions in the United States.

The year was 1784, and America was caught up in balloon-mania. Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier had successfully made the first manned hot air balloon flight in France the year before, and several Americans were looking to replicate it.

One of them was a small-town lawyer and inn-owner from Bladensburg named Peter Carnes. With little funding, only vague descriptions of how a hot air balloon works and no scientific background, he set about to build one of his own.

Remarkably, he succeeded, using a tether to make the first unmanned hot air balloon ascension in the U.S. some 70 feet above a Bladensburg flood plain on June 17. (The flight was supposed to be manned, but the passenger basket broke at the last minute.)

Carnes was more interested in making money with ticket sales than advancing science, however, and he set his next demonstration for June 24 inside a closed yard at Howard Park in Baltimore. The best tickets to watch were $2 — roughly $35 in today’s dollars — and an armed guard kept non-paying customers out.

When it came time to fly, Carnes learned too late that he’d overlooked something. At 234 pounds, he was too heavy to ride in the balloon himself, and all he could do was raise the balloon in the air on a tether a few times.

Finally, for the last flight of the day, a 13-year-old boy named Edward Warren volunteered to ride in the balloon. The ascension was a success, making him the first American aviator, and the impressed crowd took up a collection to give him a cash reward when he landed.

Carnes again attempted to ride in his hot air balloon during a demonstration in Philadelphia a month later, but a gust of wind knocked the balloon against a nearby wall, and after he jumped out, the balloon shot upward and burst into flames.

Shaken by the experience, Carnes gave up ballooning.

Bladensburg celebrated the 200th anniversary of the first U.S. balloon ascension in 1984, and there’s a historical marker at Bladensburg Waterfront Park. But the town could do more to capitalize on this historic moment — perhaps a piece of public art?