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I wonder what surviving human held the record before balloons (excluding edge cases like jumping gaps on a mountain bridge). Probably it was someone falling from a cliff into snow or water, but maybe it involved something weird like a gunpowder explosion or volcano.
Explainxkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3039:_Human_Altitude
I wonder if it may well have gone down with the combination of boom in population and rapid urbanization around coasts.