Aviation History – July 8, 1908. On this July 8, 1908, a great first took place in aviation: a pilot took on board his aircraft, for the first time in history, a passenger. An event for the time that we owe to the French sculptor Léon Delagrange who was seduced by aerial locomotion.
The flight, which will be relayed by the international daily press, took place in Italy, while the aviator had made the trip there to provide flight demonstrations with the airplane he acquired from the Voisin brothers, known as the Voisin-Delagrange n° 2 appellation. The “Flying Dandy” invited the sculptor Thérèse Peltier to take a seat at his side for a very short flight in the air, departing from Milan.
Indeed, they will only achieve a flight of two hundred meters together, evolving at an altitude of four meters. But this brief but intense experience for Thérèse Peltier will also push her to want to try the pilot’s license, but her project will not materialize, the death of Delagrange in January 1910 cutting off all her desire to fly!
