On January 25, 1879, a crowd estimated in the thousands packed inside Dalhousie Park in the Burmese city of Rangoon to experience what was promised to be a resplendent event—Percy Wyndham’s ascent in a hot-air balloon that the dashing, former Civil War colonel had personally constructed. What they witnessed instead was pure horror.
The son of a en route to Calcutta—Wyndham undoubtedly had always been a showman. His time in the Union Army, which followed stints in several European nations’ militaries, would be relatively brief. After spending time as a midshipman in the French Navy, he served for eight years as a second lieutenant in the Austrian Army. In 1860, he joined Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi’s “Redshirts” in Italy—made a chevalier of the Military Order of Savoy by King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia for his distinguished service. A year later, he traveled to America to offer his services to the U.S. government.
