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1120 Wreck of the White Ship in the English Channel
1588 The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, begins to set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel (it will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port).
1703 November 24 to December 2 - the Great Storm of 1703 ravages southern England and the English Channel, killing thousands.
1782 Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries try to cross the English Channel with a hot-air balloon.
1785 Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.
1875 Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.
1909 Louis Bleriot is the first man to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft.
1912 Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
1921 Royal Navy K-boat ''K5'' sinks in the English Channel with all 56 hands onboard.
1924 British submarine L-34 sinks in the English Channel - forty three dead.
1926 Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel from France to England
1927 Gertrude Ederle is the first Englishwoman to swim the English Channel
1940 World War II: German forces, under General Erwin Rommel, reach the English Channel. Holocaust: concentration and death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau opens in Poland.
1942 Operation Cerberus - Flotilla of Kriegsmarine ships dash from Brest through the English Channel to northern ports; British fail to sink any one of them
1950 Florence Chadwick swims across English Channel in 13 hours, 22 minutes
1966 Regular hovercraft service begins over the English Channel (discontinued 2000 due to Channel Tunnel).
1978 U.S. Army Sergeant Walter Robinson "walks" across the English Channel in 11 hours 30 minutes, using homemade water shoes.
1979 Bryan Allen flies the man-powered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.
1990 Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first ground connection between the United Kingdom and the mainland of Europe since the last Ice Age.
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