Bleriot crosses the English Channel

July 25, 1909

In a wood-and-fabric monoplane he had built himself, Louis Bleriot flew thirty-seven minutes from Calais to Dover, hopping from wave crest to wave crest with no compass and a sputtering engine. Britain's great moat had just been jumped. An English newspaper ran the headline: England no longer an island. The military implications were not lost on anyone in the War Office.