When Louis Bleriot hopped across the English Channel from France in 1909, the Channel still represented a formidable, historic geographic and cultural divide that exists today only in the imagination; cross it on a ferry in a few hours or on commercial flight without even looking out the window. Or in an electric airplane with great fanfare amidst the sort of snit only aviation could produce.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/recent-updates/business-military/airbus-asterisked-record