The first manned flight in America occurred today when French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard piloted a balloon from Pennsylvania to New Jersey . "On the day, the ninth one of the first month of our Lord, 1793, there did land among us one Frenchman by the name of Jean-Pierre Blanchard. He came in a straw basket hung beneath a cloth bag filled with smoke and carried with him a parchment from our President," reported The Coshocton Tribune on April 28, 1938. NOTE: Eight years earlier, Blanchard, along with American Dr.