Louis Blériot of 1909. Like some of the other prizes offered by the paper, it was widely seen as nothing more than a way to gain cheap publicity: the Paris newspaper "Le Matin" commenting that there was no chance of the prize being won. The English Channel had been crossed by an unmanned hydrogen balloon in 1784 and a manned crossing by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries followed in 1785. Blériot, who intended to fly across the Channel in his Type XI monoplane, had three rivals for the prize, the most serious being Hubert Latham, a French national of English extraction flying
Sophie Blanchard and Blanchard's story were relegated to the margins of aviation history. A novel inspired by Blanchard's story, Linda Donn's "The Little Balloonist", was published in 2006. a. As Comte de Provence, Louis had earlier been a patron of balloon pioneer Pilâtre de Rozier, who had been the victim of the first fatal ballooning accident on 15 June 1785. b. Most sources do not mention the number of the house but some say number 15 or number 16, and some claim the building was a hotel. </div> Sophie Blanchard Sophie Blanchard (25 March 1778 – 6 July 1819), commonly referred to