Showing results for "Charles Lindbergh" in Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

On the morning of May 20, 1927, a little-known pilot named Charles Lindbergh waited to take off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island. He was determined to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize promised to the first pilot to fly nonstop from New York to Paris - a contest that had already claimed six men's lives. Just 25 years old, Lindbergh had never before flown over water. Yet 33 hours later, his single-engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, touched down in Paris.

The 25-year old Charles A. Lindbergh climbed into his single-engine monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, and took off for Paris, determined to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize promised to the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. For the next 33 hours, as he navigated through storms across the perilous Atlantic Ocean, news of his attempt circled the globe, making him an international celebrity by the time he reached Paris.

In late May 1927 an inexperienced and unassuming 25-year-old Air Mail pilot from rural Minnesota stunned the world by making the first non-stop transatlantic flight. A spectacular feat of individual daring and collective technological accomplishment, Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris ushered in America's age of commercial aviation.