On 5th September 1862 James Glaisher, a meteorologist, and Henry Coxwell, a balloonist, ascended to about seven miles, and came close to dying from frostbite and asphyxiation, in an open wicker basket, lifted by a balloon filled with coal gas, without oxygen. The fight was a pioneering scientific expedition to study the atmosphere, whose properties at that time were known only from observations on or near the ground.
My question is: how long did their height record, unpressurised and without oxygen, last, and who broke it, if at all?
I have tagged this "spaceflight", of course it is not really (and there is no tag for balloon or flight) but their near death experience, and the heroic efforts of Coxwell to untangle the vent line to allow them to descend, was a 19thC forerunner of Apollo 13 one hundred years later.