Alongside the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh and John Glenn, now enter Steve Fossett as a pioneer aviator. When he landed at dawn on July 4 near the dry Lake Yamma Yamma in Queensland, Australia, Fossett, ’66, became the first person to fly solo around the world in a hot air balloon.
This was Fossett’s sixth attempt—his fourth in 1998 nearly killed him when his balloon was torn to shreds during a thunderstorm and plummeted more than 28,000 feet into the Coral Sea. This time, after enduring 14 days and more than 20,000 miles in freezing temperatures and terrible wind, he finally did it.
Fossett’s adventure résumé also includes climbing the highest peaks in six of seven continents, swimming the English Channel and completing the 1,100-mile Iditarod dogsled race in Alaska.
As an undergraduate at Stanford, he was already testing limits. Spurred on by fraternity brothers in his senior year, he swam to Alcatraz and hung a “Beat Cal” banner on the wall of the island prison that had shut down two years earlier.
Fossett’s balloon capsule will soon be exhibited at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.—right next to Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.
