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3 unusual facts about Jules Védrines


Jules Védrines

He was apprenticed to the Gnome engine manufacturing company, after which he spent six months in England as Robert Loraine's mechanic in 1910, and then returned to France, where he gained his pilot's license (no. 312) on 7 December 1910 at the Blériot school at Pau.

After Prague he proceeded via Sofia, Constantinople (where he pleased the Sultan by dropping a Turkish flag on the Imperial palace), reaching Beirut on 25 December, Jaffa on the 27th, and finally, on the 29th, landing on the polo ground at Heliopolis, where he was greeted by a representative of the Khedive and by the French Agent, who placed a laurel wreath bound with a tricoleur around his neck.

After a long delay in Nancy, on 20 November Védrines circumvented the ban by the transparent ruse of heading west on taking off from Nancy, changing course for Prague when out of sight of the airfield.



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