American aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Charles Lindbergh

(1902 - 1974)

Charles Lindbergh completed the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, flying 3,610 miles in just under thirty-three and a half hours before landing at Le Bourget field near Paris to a crowd of over a million people. In 1932 his son was kidnapped and killed, the murderer executed four years later for “the crime of the century.” His advocacy for neutrality in World War II drew criticism from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lindbergh later flew fifty combat missions in the Pacific.

All Writing

I have seen the science I worshipped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

—Charles Lindbergh, 1948

Miscellany

Charles Lindbergh bought five sandwiches for his flight across the Atlantic in 1927, saying, “If I get to Paris, I won’t need any more, and if I don’t get to Paris, I won’t need any more either.” It took him thirty-three and a half hours. Amelia Earhart in 1932 flew across the Atlantic in fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes, during which she drank chicken soup from a thermos, and a can of tomato juice—opened with an ice pick. 

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