This tale appeared in the "New York Sun" as a news story in 1844 with the claim that a group of men had successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the United Kingdom in a new type of lighter-than-air balloon. They had landed in South Carolina.

Although the story looked real, it was complete fiction and created entirely from Poe's imagination. Among the public, it's publication in the paper as a news event resulted in quite a stir. It was one of the first to use real names, such as aviation pioneers William Samuel Henson and George Cayley, as part of a fictitious news story, thus lending it greater veracity.