France's Louis Blériot makes first airplane flight across the English Channel

Louis Charles Joseph Blériot was a French aviator, inventor, and engineer. He developed the first practical headlamp for cars and established a profitable business manufacturing them, using much of the money he made to finance his attempts to build a successful aircraft. Blériot was the first to use the combination of hand-operated joystick and foot-operated rudder control as used to the present day to operate the aircraft control surfaces. Blériot was also the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane. In 1909 he became world-famous for making the first aeroplane flight across the English Channel, winning the prize of £1,000 (worth £152,113 in 2025) offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. He was the founder of Blériot Aéronautique, a successful aircraft manufacturing company.