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1120 Wreck of the White Ship in the English Channel
1588 The Spanish Armada
, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, begins to set sail from Lisbon
heading for the English Channel (it will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port).
1703 November 24 to December 2 - the Great Storm of 1703 ravages southern England
and the English Channel, killing thousands.
1782 Jean-Pierre Blanchard
and John Jeffries try to cross the English Channel with a hot-air balloon.
1785 Frenchman
Jean-Pierre Blanchard
and America
n John Jeffries travel from Dover, England
to Calais
, France
in a hydrogen gas balloon
, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
1875 Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.
1909 Louis Bleriot
is the first man to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft.
1912 Harriet Quimby
becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
1921 Royal Navy
K-boat ''K5'' sinks in the English Channel with all 56 hands onboard.
1924 British submarine L-34 sinks in the English Channel - forty three dead.
1926 Gertrude Ederle
becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel from France to England
1927 Gertrude Ederle
is the first Englishwoman to swim the English Channel
1940 World War II
: German
forces, under General Erwin Rommel
, reach the English Channel. Holocaust: concentration and death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau opens in Poland
.
1942 Operation Cerberus - Flotilla of Kriegsmarine ships dash from Brest through the English Channel to northern ports; British fail to sink any one of them
1950 Florence Chadwick swims across English Channel in 13 hours, 22 minutes
1966 Regular hovercraft service begins over the English Channel (discontinued 2000 due to Channel Tunnel
).
1978 U.S. Army Sergeant Walter Robinson "walks" across the English Channel in 11 hours 30 minutes, using homemade water shoes.
1979 Bryan Allen flies the man-powered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.
1990 Channel Tunnel
workers from the United Kingdom
and France
meet 40 meters beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first ground connection between the United Kingdom
and the mainland of Europe
since the last Ice Age.
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Timeline
