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
2016 Lockhart hot air balloon crash pilot's "pattern of poor decision-making" that led him to launch the balloon (on a day when other balloon operators cancelled their planned flights because of low cloud and fog), to continue the flight into fog and above clouds, and then to descend near clouds which made it difficult to see and avoid obstacles. The pilot's medical conditions (depression and ADHD), the prescription drugs he was taking, and the fact that balloon pilots do not need a medical certificate even for commercial flights were contributing factors leading to the accident. On August 1, Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides, whose