What’s the News of the Day?

Origins

This little rhyme bubbled up during the great balloon craze of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Crowds gathered in fields to watch them lift off, newspapers rushed out breathless reports, and for a while, ballooning felt like magic.

Imagine yourself in a crowd, waiting for a balloon to rise two hundred years ago. Housewives with baskets, children, and tradesmen all waiting to see the wonder. Then, with a gasp from the crowd, the balloon lifts. A wobbling globe of fabric drifting into the sky. People point and cheer, and guess about where it might land. Some even swear it could go farther than anyone dreamed.
That mood of wonder and exaggeration is what gave birth to the rhyme. In a world without radios or headlines flashing across screens, news traveled by gossip and chatter. A neighbor might lean over the fence and ask, “What’s the news today?” and the answer, half joke and half marvel, might be, “They say the balloon’s gone up to the moon!” Children picked it up, repeated it, and turned it into a chant. 

The line about a balloon “gone up to the moon” plays right into that wonder. Nobody thought it was true, of course — but in an age when people were seeing humans float into the sky for the first time, why not imagine the impossible? A rhyme like this gave children a way to join in the excitement, turning cutting-edge news into play.