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CNN
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In Lord Byron’s satirical epic poem, “Don Juan,” the main character marvels at “the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars … of air-balloons, and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies — and then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”
The balloon from China floating eastward over the United States last week riveted the nation’s attention for a lot longer.
At first, the enormous balloon, carrying a smaller substructure roughly the length of three city buses, seemed to symbolize America’s wide-open vulnerability to what the Pentagon described as surveillance from a rising power.
But the downing of the balloon off the Carolinas Saturday gave…
