The first parachute jump was in October, 1797. AndreJacques Garnerin launched himself from a hot air balloon 2300 feet above the Parc Monceau in Paris. He was the precursor of the first serious use of such devices. Military observers during the first World War would parachute to safety, if they could, when the balloons in which they carried out their duties were hit by enemy fire.
The use of parachutes by pilots began slightly later. Early aeronauts preferred to stay with their crippled aircraft. It was not until 1918 that the practice of wearing parachutes became the norm. But a parachute is no guarantee of safety; the weather can play nasty tricks by placing an inconvenient thundercloud between an abandoned aircraft and the ground.
US Marine Corps pilot William Rankin survived such an experience. Rankin baled out of his aircraft 47,000 feet over North Carolina on July 26th, 1956, and fell into the middle of a thunderstorm. His parachute was set to open at 10,000 feet, and in normal circumstances he would have fallen from there to the ground in a few minutes.
But the violent winds inside the thundercloud bounced him up and down like a ping-pong ball for three-quarters of an hour. Throughout the ordeal he was surrounded by lightning and deafened by the sound of thunder.
"I was blown up and down as much as 6000 feet at a time," he wrote afterwards. "It was like being in a very fast elevator, bombarded with blasts of compressed air.
"Once, when a violent blast of air sent me careering up into the chute, I could feel the cold wet nylon collapsing about me and I was sure the chute would never blossom again. But its billow, by some miracle, recovered.
"The wind had savage allies. The thunder came as a deafening explosion that literally shook my teeth. I didn't just hear the thunder, I felt it - an almost unbearable physical experience. If it had not been for my helmet the explosions might have shattered my ear drums.
"I saw lightning all around in every shape imaginable. When very close it appeared as a huge bluish sheet, several feet thick. It was raining so torrentially that I thought I would drown in mid-air, and several times I held my breath, fearing that otherwise I might inhale quarts of water."
Rankin survived but it was a very close-run thing.