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« This Week in Aviation History
Week of January 7th
A century before Matthew Webb became the first man to swim the English Channel, Jean-Pierre Francois Blanchard completed the first flight over the English Channel in a hot air balloon. January 7, 1785. It was in this week in aviation history when Jean-Pierre Francois Blanchard completed the first flight over the English Channel in a hot air balloon. The English Channel, an appendage of the Atlantic Ocean that blends in with the choppy waters of the North Sea, had been for Britain a great natural barrier, akin to the Himalayas in Asia or North America’s sudsy isolated shores. It had repelled Armadas of Spain, the amassed armies of Napoleon and Nazi invaders. As something so credited for its fortitude, it stands to reason then that man has had a compulsion to challenge the Channel through impressive feat time and time again. That was French inventor Jean-Pierre’s motivation in his expedition of air – a feat that took place nearly a century before Matthew Webb became the first man to swim the English Channel. Blanchard had been a pioneering figure in ballooning and his first successful balloon flight came only the year prior. And in 1793, after the attempt over the Channel, Blanchard also became pilot to the first balloon flight in North America, ascending from Philadelphia and landing in New Jersey, and he holds duplicate flight records in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. But it was his two-and-a-half hour flight from Dover Castle in England to France that has been well remembered by history. This Week in Aviation History 1/7/08
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