{"id":985,"date":"2010-01-01T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-01T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bronicable.com\/en\/?p=985"},"modified":"2026-07-23T13:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T11:36:14","slug":"on-this-day-in-bulgaria-august-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bronicable.com\/en\/on-this-day-in-bulgaria\/on-this-day-in-bulgaria-august-1\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in Bulgaria: August 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two events on August 1 in Bulgaria&#8217;s history pull in different directions \u2014 one a tentative reach toward the skies, the other a decisive step toward democratic self-rule.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>August 1, 1912 \u2014 Bulgaria&#8217;s First Homemade Balloon Takes Flight<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>After four months of work, the Bulgarian military balloon detachment completed the country&#8217;s first domestically built hydrogen balloon and sent it into the air for the first time on August 1, 1912. It flew alongside the newly formed aeroplane unit, both born of a 1911 decision to train Bulgarian officers as pilots and aeromechanics abroad.<\/p>\n<p>The flight was modest, but its timing was not: Bulgaria was weeks away from mobilising for the First Balkan War, and the balloon went on to take part in military manoeuvres near Shumen as part of the country&#8217;s rapid push to build aerial capability from the ground up.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>August 1, 1990 \u2014 Zhelyu Zhelev Becomes President<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Bulgaria&#8217;s 7th Grand National Assembly elected philosopher Zhelyu Zhelev as president on August 1, 1990, making him the country&#8217;s first non-Communist head of state in more than four decades. Zhelev had been expelled from the Communist Party in 1965 for his dissident writings and went on to co-found the Union of Democratic Forces after Todor Zhivkov&#8217;s fall in November 1989.<\/p>\n<p>He succeeded Petar Mladenov, who had resigned under public pressure, and in 1992 became Bulgaria&#8217;s first directly elected president. Zhelev served until 1997, steering the country through the turbulent opening years of its post-communist transition.<\/p>\n<p>Find more moments like these in the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bronicable.com\/en\/on-this-day-in-bulgaria\/on-this-day-in-bulgaria-august-2\/\">August 2<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bronicable.com\/en\/on-this-day-in-bulgaria\/on-this-day-in-bulgaria-august-3\/\">August 3<\/a><\/strong> entries of this series, or explore <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bronicable.com\/en\/category\/from-above\/\">Bulgaria From Above<\/a><\/strong> and our <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/bronicable.com\/en\/category\/bulgaria\/\">guides to Bulgaria<\/a><\/strong> on Bronicable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this day in Bulgarian history: the country&#8217;s first domestically built balloon flew for the first time in 1912, and Zhelyu Zhelev was elected Bulgaria&#8217;s first non-Communist president in 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-this-day-in-bulgaria","latest_post"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>On This Day in Bulgaria: August 1 History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On this day in Bulgaria, August 1: the country&#039;s first homemade balloon took flight in 1912, and Zhelyu Zhelev was elected Bulgaria&#039;s first non-Communist president in 1990.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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