On this day in 2003, 34 year old Austrian, Felix Baumgartner
became the first man to pass over the English Channel by unpowered flight. He
leapt from a plane at about 9,800m above Dover, England and glided 22 miles
across the Channel in only a 10 minute flight wearing a special suit with
carbon-fibre wings across his back. The flight began at about 220mph,
descending to around 135mph towards the end of his flight, when he landed by
parachute at Cap Blanc-Nex, near Calais, in France. He was equipped with all necessary
equipment, oxygen, cameras and high tech data monitors which enabled his
journey to be tracked. His wing span of 1.8m was about 10cm longer than another
he used only a few weeks earlier to win a race against an aeroplane in the U.S.
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