Enrich your Reading

Planes to rockets in  

sixty years 

There are just sixty years between the first flight and the first  

man on the moon. In the 20th century, progress in aviation  

was phenomenal. 

1909 – the first air  

journey 

On July 25 1909, a Frenchman, Louis Blériot, became  

the first man to complete an air journey when he flew  

from Calais, in the north of France, to Dover, in the south of  

England. Blériot’s flight amazed the whole of Europe. People  

thought that such a journey was impossible. 

The flight 

The flight wasn’t easy. Mr Blériot, a 37-year-old engineer,  

couldn’t swim, so he didn’t want to come down in the  

Channel. He couldn’t walk very well because of an injury  

to his leg, and he didn’t have a compass. 

On the morning of the 25th, he took off at 4.30 from a field  

at the edge of a cliff. It took 37 minutes to complete the 22-mile  

journey. The plane flew at 40 miles per hour at an altitude of  

250 feet. 

Everything went well until he flew into fog. ‘I continued  

flying for ten minutes, but I couldn’t see the land, only the  

sky and the sea. It was the most dangerous part of the flight.  

I wasn’t worried about the machine. It flew beautifully.  

Finally, I saw the land,’ he told reporters. 

Landing in England 

When he got to Dover, he saw a French journalist waving a  

flag. He cut the engine at 60 feet and crashed into a field. 

The news quickly went round the world, and Mr Blériot’s flight  

was celebrated in London and Paris. He won a prize of £1,000. 

‘The crossing was the start of modern aviation,’ said  

Louis Blériot, the grandson of the pioneer