First double-crossing of the English channel by aircraft

The first double-crossing of the English Channel was made by Charles Stewart Rolls (UK) on 2 June 1910. Rolls took off from the Swingate Downs near Dover at about 6.30 p.m. in a Wright Brothers Model A biplane. He flew across the English Channel to the French coast, where he flew low circles over the town of Sangatte, dropping a note for the attention of the Aero Club of France, before flying back to Dover, where he landed at around 8 p.m. Rolls estimated that he had flown a total of 50 miles and that he had enough fuel for another 15 or so.

Charles Stewart Rolls was born in 1877, the youngest son of Baron Llangattock, an MP and decorated hero of the Crimean War. His childhood was marked by a love of machines and danger; he went on joyrides in the gardener's steam tractor and built what would now be called soapbox derby cars, which he raced down the hills on his father's country estate. He later graduated to the new-fangled "safety" bicycle, and after that the motor car (a 3.75 horsepower Peugeot he had imported while an undergraduate at Cambridge).

His love of automobiles led to him earning a degree in mechanical engineering (extremely unusual for a child of the British aristocracy) and later founding a car company with Manchester-based engineer Henry Royce.

While acting as technical director and chief salesman for the Rolls-Royce company, he made his first record attempt – a land-speed record run. On 26 February 1902, he reached a speed of 82.5 mph (132 km/h) near Welbeck in Germany, knocking 5 seconds off the 1-km straight-line record. The Auto Club of France refused to recognise his attempt, however, because the run was made on a downhill slope with a gale-force tailwind. Also he packed the car with "a certain quantity of lead".

Around this time, Rolls began to get bored with automobiles and the responsibilities of running a company. He turned his hand to hot-air balloon racing. In October 1906, Rolls broke the world record for the longest hot-air balloon flight, winning himself the coveted Gordon Bennett trophy in the process.

Not long after, he travelled to the United States on a promotional tour for the Rolls-Royce company and while there, met with the Wright Brothers in New York. He first flew in a powered aircraft in 1908, when Wilbur Wright took him for a spin over northern France, and he immediately set about trying to get one of his own. When the Rolls-Royce board of directors refused to get into the aeroplane business, Rolls resigned and started looking elsewhere.

In 1909, He was finally able to buy a plane – a Wright Model A that had been built under license at the Short Brothers workshop on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. In addition to his record breaking flight, over the next few months, he undertook public demonstrations and exhibition flights all over Britain.

It was on one of these exhibition flights that Rolls' luck – which had carried him through various car crashes and hot air balloon accidents – finally ran out.

On the 12th of July 1909, he took the train down to Bournemouth in Dorset (because he'd recently been banned from driving for yet another speeding ticket) to take part in an air show. While taking part in the "Alighting contest" – a sort of precision landing test – Rolls pushed his aircraft into a steep dive. This sharp manoeuvre, combined with a gusty crosswind, was too much for the airframe. One of the supports holding the tail snapped, sending his Wright Model A tumbling to the ground. Charles Rolls was killed on impact.

At the time of his death, Charles Stewart Rolls was just 32 years old. A bronze statue was erected in his hometown of Monmouth the following year, and another in Dover in 1912. His memory lives on in the various companies that bear his name, which did get into the aircraft business eventually.