Quick Facts<\/h4>
| Nationality<\/td> | French \ud83c\uddeb\ud83c\uddf7<\/td><\/tr> |
| Achievement<\/td> | First aeroplane crossing of the English Channel<\/td><\/tr> |
| Historic Flight<\/td> | 25 July 1909 \u2014 Calais to Dover, 37 minutes<\/td><\/tr> |
| Aircraft<\/td> | Bl\u00e9riot XI monoplane, 25 hp Anzani engine<\/td><\/tr> |
| Prize Won<\/td> | \u00a31,000 Daily Mail prize for first Channel crossing<\/td><\/tr> |
| Born \/ Died<\/td> | 1 Jul 1872 \u2013 1 Aug 1936 (age 64)<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n![\"Louis](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/9\/9c\/Louis_Bleriot.jpg\/960px-Louis_Bleriot.jpg\") It was 4:41 AM when he lifted off from a field near Calais. He followed the French destroyer Escopette, which had been assigned as his escort vessel, for the first ten minutes. Then the destroyer fell behind. Then the mist closed in. For ten minutes \u2014 he would describe them as the longest of his life \u2014 Bl\u00e9riot flew alone over open water with no reference to the surface below and no landmarks ahead. His engine started to overheat. He watched the temperature gauge climbing and prayed for rain.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rain came. A brief shower cooled the engine just enough. Then the white cliffs of Dover appeared through the mist, and Bl\u00e9riot steered toward them. He missed his intended landing spot \u2014 a meadow arranged by a French journalist named Charles Fontaine who was there to greet him \u2014 and instead crash-landed on a hillside near Dover Castle, snapping his propeller and one of his wheel struts. He climbed out, uninjured.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Why It Terrified Britain<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe English Channel had been Britain’s greatest natural defence for a thousand years. No foreign army had successfully crossed it since 1066. Now a Frenchman with a 25-horsepower engine had done it in 37 minutes. British newspapers reacted with a mixture of jubilation and barely-concealed alarm. “England is no longer an island,” wrote one editorial. Lord Northcliffe, who had offered the \u00a31,000 prize, immediately grasped the military implications: “The possibilities of the aeroplane as an instrument of warfare are in the minds of all thoughtful men.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Bl\u00e9riot received the prize and instant global celebrity. Orders for his Bl\u00e9riot XI poured in from around the world. The aircraft he flew that morning would go on to be used in the early months of World War I \u2014 including by Harriet Quimby, who made her own historic Channel crossing three years later. The monoplane that changed history is still preserved at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts et M\u00e9tiers in Paris, looking every bit as flimsy as it must have on that July morning in 1909.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n \n \n\u201cI had no fear. But I was not certain I would arrive. You cannot be certain of anything with a machine that has never flown so far.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Louis Bl\u00e9riot, after landing near Dover Castle, 25 July 1909<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Bl\u00e9riot went on to build aircraft for the French military and remained a central figure in aviation until the 1930s. He died in 1936, aged 64 \u2014 just as the aircraft he had done so much to inspire were being built into weapons for a second world war. The Channel he crossed in 37 minutes would soon be contested by the aircraft of the Battle of Britain, machines a thousand times more powerful than his little XI. But it all started with a broken ankle, an overheating engine, and ten minutes of fog over the Channel.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n |