CALAIS, France — Louis Bleriot was declared crazy by his own mother.
“He wants to fly over the English Channel in a kite,” she complained to friends a century ago.
Bleriot defied her and helped usher in commercial plane travel with an epic flight from Calais to Dover in 1909, aboard a winged contraption with bicycle wheels and a wooden propeller.
A pilot is re-creating the journey of the 37-year-old Frenchman in one of Bleriot’s monoplanes to mark the anniversary today.
The aircraft, made famous after the channel crossing, was commercialized with more than 800 copies made and put into action in World War I by several air forces.
The flight came six years after the Wright brothers flew overland over Kitty Hawk, N.C., and during a decade in which pioneers in Europe and North America were developing the rudiments of airplane technology and expanding its limits.
Pilot Edmond Salis, 39, will board a monoplane like Bleroit’s at 7 a.m. today in Calais and try to re-create Bleriot’s feat. Later, daredevils in flying crates will take part in an air race. In the evening, a gala dinner is planned in Dover, followed by fireworks.
Crossing the English Channel
Aircraft: Louis Bleriot towed his craft into the start position on a field near Calais on July 25, 1909. It had a 25-horsepower motor and was baptized Bleriot XI. The wooden propeller roared.
Takeoff: At 4:41 a.m., the 23-foot-long wonderbird took off. Just 38 minutes later, the daring dream was a reality: Bleriot landed in a field near Dover on the English coast, the first person to fly across the English Channel.
Touchdown: The landing was bumpy, and the aircraft damaged, because Bleriot had been forced to cut the engine about 65 feet above the ground.
