The netting and rigging, catching in the tree, checked my velocity, but I had my grasp jerked loose, and was precipitated through the limbs and landed flat upon my back, with my tights nearly torn off, and my legs, arms, and body lacerated and bleeding.”[2] Shortly after this, he ascended again from Norfolk.

On the first occasion he was carried out over Lake Michigan and dragged more than a mile through the water, bringing up against a stone pier finally with such violence as to render him insensible.

On 17 May 1873, he ascended from Reading, Pa., in a balloon made of manilla paper enclosed with a light network, the whole weighing but 48 pounds, although it contained 14,000 cubic feet (400 m3) of gas.

Three unsuccessful attempts were made at inflation, the balloon bursting each time, when finally the aeronaut Samuel Archer King was sent for, and the work was accomplished.

Fortunately, they kept inland sufficiently to clear the water till it became manifest that the aeronaut was as incapable of managing the mammoth globe in the air as he had been on the ground.

Scarcely one hundred miles had been run when control was completely lost, and the voyagers found themselves dashing about among trees and fences, and coming close to the ground.

A thousand-pound drag rope was trailing, which prevented the balloon from rising to any considerable height after the two men had left the car, and Lunt, panic stricken at finding himself alone with the monster, threw himself bodily into the first tree the boat came in contact with near Canaan, Connecticut, and fell through to the ground without being able to stop himself.

They expected to have an experience over Lake Erie, but after a sail of twenty miles (32 km) or more over the water they reached the Canada shore, landing finally near Port Colborne.

The air being very still, the balloon, although it drifted lakeward, did not get more than three miles (4.8 km) from the shore, and was towed back to the starting-place with most of the gas remaining in it, and held for the ascension of the following day.

Why didn't you go somewhere?” “Wait till to-morrow,” he replied, “and I'll go far enough for you.”[2] On the following day the wind was blowing up the lake at the rate of ten to fifteen miles (24 km) an hour.

An additional amount of gas was supplied to make up for what had been lost; but, in consequence of the deterioration of what had been in the balloon since the previous day, the buoyancy was not as great as usual.

Knowing that he would have a long voyage up the lake, he determined to take but one companion with him, Newton S. Grimwood, of the Chicago Evening Journal, drawing the prize, as it was then considered.

Like Donaldson, the Wizard of Oz was a balloonist, ventriloquist and stage magician who worked for a circus, but disappeared, balloon and all, during an ascent, and was never found.

[3] The phrase "goodbye cruel world" first appeared in a newspaper article published on the 5th of August, 1875, in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat that discussed Donaldson's disappearance.