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First balloon crossing of the English Channel
- When
- 7 January 1785
- Where
- Dover Castle (departure); landing at Guînes
Blanchard and Jeffries flew from Dover Castle to Guînes in a hydrogen gas balloon on 7 January 1785, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
The flight took about 2½ hours to travel from England to France on 7 January 1785, departing from Dover Castle and landing at Guînes. The King ordered the balloon and boat be hung up in the church of Église Notre-Dame de Calais.
Sources
- Jean-Pierre Blanchard Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-10
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.