Ženavlje is a small, unassuming village in the hilly Goričko region of northeastern Slovenia. It’s a farming community that is as quiet today as it was a century ago. One summer day 80 years ago, however, was unlike any other. Some older residents of Ženavlje still remember August 18, 1934, as the day when a mysterious craft descended on their quiet village.

It happened in the evening, when many locals were winding down a hard day of work spent on the fields around Ženavlje. That’s when mysterious object began to approach the village from the north, rapidly losing altitude as it approached. A few people realized that the craft was a balloon and rushed toward it to help it land.

Once the balloon was on the ground, two Belgian scientists emerged from the craft -- Max Cosyns, a famed Belgian explorer, and his assistant, Nérée Van Der Elst. Cosyns was no stranger to balloon adventures. Two years earlier, he was a part of a team that made a record-breaking flight into the stratosphere, an achievement that earned Cosyns the Order of Leopold from the King of Belgium.

Before their unexpected landing in Ženavlje, Cosyns and Van Der Elst had been conducting high-altitude experiments, focusing on cosmic rays and stratospheric winds. The experiments were a success, and 14 hours after they had taken off in Belgium, they received a formal welcome from the village elders, and retired to bed.
What few residents of Ženavlje knew that the time, however, was that the Cosyns and Van Der Elst had been in radio contact for much of the flight and had a made a series of live reports that were picked up by radio stations from around Europe. Their landing in Ženavlje turned out to be a huge media event. Reporters from across the continent flocked to the little village, and radio bulletins about their arrival even aired in the United States. The reports contained in-depth descriptions about this obscure corner of Slovenia, and in the following few days, thousands of curious onlookers gathered in Ženavlje to catch a glimpse of the daring balloonists.

Cosyns and Van Der Elst eventually left Ženavlje via Ljubljana and Zagreb, where they were received by formal delegations. Meanwhile, the memory of that August day was kept alive in the village for years to come. In 1997, the people of Ženavlje erected a sculpture of the balloon’s capsule and a plaque recalling the day when their village found itself at the center of world’s media spotlight.

Max Cosyns died a year after the plaque was unveiled - in the tenth decade of his life.