Blériot's monoplane at Selfridges

Why it works

On 25 July 1909 Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel. That same day, The New York Times reported from London, Harry Gordon Selfridge arranged to put the aircraft on show in his new Oxford Street department store, paying to bring it up from Dover and making a donation to a London hospital for the privilege. A Selfridges souvenir postcard held by the SFO Museum records the plane on display at 9 a.m. the following morning. The BBC reports that around 150,000 people came to see it over four days. It is studied as an early and near-perfect piece of newsjacking: a retailer who sold shopping as entertainment borrowed the biggest story of the summer and made his shop floor the place to witness it. The Guardian's centenary profile of the store lists it alongside John Logie Baird's first public television demonstration among the spectacles that defined Selfridges.