Matias Perez

Matias Perez was a Portuguese pilot, canopy maker and Cuban resident who, carried away with the ever increasing popularity of aerostatic aircraft, disappeared while attempting an aerostatic flight from Havana's "Plaza de Marte" (today, "Parque Central") on June 28, 1856.

A few days earlier he had made a successful attempt, flying several miles. His second try, however, became part of Cuba's folklore: when somebody or something disappears into thin air, people say: "Voló como Matías Pérez" (flew away like Matias Perez).

See also

• Cluster ballooning
• Other intrepid balloonists:
  • Adelir Antonio de Carli (aka Padre Baloneiro), Brazilian priest, human-right defender, unfortunately lost in the Atlantic Ocean in Brazilian offshore water at his second cluster balloon tentative on April 20, 2008.
  • Bartolomeu de Gusmão, a priest and naturalist born in the Portuguese colony of Brazil, recalled for his first balloon flight in Lisbon in 1720 (the ballon burned).
  • Danny Deckchair, a 2004 Australian comedy film inspired by the story of "Lawnchair Larry" (Larry Walters).
  • Larry Walters, an American truck driver who took flight in California on July 2, 1982 in a homemade aircraft consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it.
  • Yoshikazu Suzuki, a Japanese balloonist also lost in the ocean.

References

Corbitt D.C. (1941) How Matias Perez Flew. Hispania, Vol. 24, No. 3 (October 1941), pp. 277–280 doi:10.2307/331902

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Name	Perez, Matias
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