Giovanni Maria Salati (Malesco,1796 - ?, ...) was an Italian soldier.
Son of Domenico and Anna Maria Salati, he was recruited into Napoleonic army. The 16 August 1817, Giovanni Maria Salati had been a prisoner for a few months in Dover, captured by the English and kept in an old ship used as a concentration camp.
That day would have been his last day of captivity: overnight the 21-year-old marine rifleman, wounded and defeated at Waterloo, jumped into the water heading toward the coast of France.
He was the first man in the world to have crossed the Channel by swimming. Captain Matthew Webb was the first. He was killed trying to swim agross the Niagra River in Canada/US He swam the channel in 1875.
nilima ghosh
Gossamer Albatross was the first man-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel on 12 June 1979. It was made of carbon fibre covered by Mylar and weighed only about 220 pounds for the Channel crossing. Invented by Paul McReady and flown by Bryan Allen.
In historic times, the Thames and the Rhine were the same river, and there was no English Channel. So people crossed over to England on foot, without any idea of invasion. After the English Channel started to widen, the first known invaders were the Romans, followed by the Angles and Jutes, then the Saxons. The Norman conquest of 1066 is the last officially-recognised invasion. But events after 1950, continuing to the present day, will eventually be recognised as an invasion in the full sense.
It was a telegraph cable laid in August 1850 by the Anglo-French Telegraph Company, owned by John Watkins Brett. Running from Dover to Calais, it was made of copper coated in gutta-percha.
The first pitched battle of the English War was that of Edgehill, fought on Oct.23,1642.
nilima ghosh
She was the first disabled person who in 1992 swam across the English Channel, in a relay team.
The English Channel was first crossed by air in 1785. The balloon trip took two hours.
Charles Lindberg was the first to cross the English Channel in an airplane , The Spirit of St.Louis .
Delacroix crossed the English Channel, first aviation race.
Gurtrude Ederle.
Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries crossed the English Channel by balloon on January 7, 1785. The journey took 2.5 hours.
No, Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. She achieved this feat in 14 hours and 31 minutes, becoming a pioneer in long-distance swimming.
Linda McGill was in fact the first Australian to successfully swim the English Channel. She accomplished this feat in 1965.
Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel without assistance. His first attempt was a failure but on August 25th, 1875 he made the crossing in twenty one hours and forty five minutes.
Philippe Croizon (born 1968) is a French athlete and the first quadruple amputee to swim across the English Channel (2010).
Canadian Cindy Nicholas was the first female swimmer to complete a two-way crossing of the English Channel. She completed the feat on September 8, 1977, in 19 hours and 55 minutes.