Paris (AFP)

By plane, hot air balloon but also in gondola or "aquacycle". Before Franky Zapata, nicknamed "the flying man", other pioneers managed to connect France and England in a thousand and one ways.

- In balloon (s) -

January 7, 1785, the French Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American John Jeffries make the first crossing of the Channel in ballooning. Leaving from Dover (England), they land three hours later on a tree in the forest of Guines, near Boulogne-sur-Mer (France).

225 years later, in May 2010, an American adventurer, Jonathan Trappe, will make the crossing carried by a bouquet of 55 multicolored balloons inflated with helium.

- At the swim -

Matthew Webb, a captain of the British Merchant Navy, made his first swim on August 25, 1875, in 21 hours and 45 minutes. The American Gertrude Ederle will be the first woman in 1926, in 14 hours and 31 minutes.

On September 18, 2010, Philippe Croizon, a 42-year-old Frenchman with four limbs amputated, tames the Channel in about 13 hours, thanks to prostheses equipped with fins attached to his leg stumps.

- By plane -

On July 25, 1909, the French builder and aviator Louis Blériot, from Calais, landed in Dover after 37 minutes of flight aboard "Blériot XI". In addition to a price of £ 1,000 offered by the British daily newspaper Daily Mail, this first will allow the manufacturer to fill his order book.

In 1979, the American Brian Allen, 26 years old, will make the crossing by pedal plane. As for the two retired British Douglas Penn and Ann Jackson, they will do in 1988 standing on a wing of the plane.

- On the water -

On July 25, 1959, the British commander Peter Lamb makes the first crossing at the controls of a single-seat prototype of hovercraft, a craft that slides on a cushion of air about twenty centimeters above the waves.

In 1986, it was in a two-seater kayak that Normans Dominique Vaast and Francois Bocquet, aged 28 and 21, traveled the 200 kilometers between Portsmouth and Le Havre. Their time: 26 hours and 5 minutes.

In 1987, Steve Butterworth, a 30-year-old British unijambian, connects France and England in monoski, towed by a small speedboat.

Vittorio Orio, a 60-year-old Venetian, crosses the Dover-Calais on a gondola in 2001.

In 1984, Rick and Stephen Cooper, two British brothers aged 26 and 30, make the same pedal boat trip in just over eight hours.

Yvon Le Caer, a 40-year-old Breton architect, arrives in Poole on 10 September 1985 on his "aquacycle", a craft he made by assembling a bicycle on floats, after crossing 148 kilometers in 16 hours and 42 hours. minutes from Cherbourg.

- In parachute -

In 1988, Yves Marre, a 37-year-old French inventor, crosses the English Channel with a motor-powered paraglider, called "Propulsar". He is stopped by British customs officers on his landing in a field near Dover and released. He claims the first crossing on a device to take off and land on the feet.

Eleven years later, Thierry Demonfort and Bertrand de Gaullier, French officers aged 34 and 36, make the first tandem parachute crossing, reaching Calais in 25 minutes. They had been dropped at an altitude of 8,000 meters above Dover.

On July 31, 2003, Austria's Felix Baumgartner, 34, crosses the English Channel in freefall, equipped with a carbon wing. He jumps from an airplane over Dover, falls for about ten minutes to more than 200 km / h, before opening his parachute over Cap Blanc-Nez, near Calais.

© 2019 AFP