Lindbergh's Flight
A few months after Roscoe Bartlett was born, Charles Lindbergh was bailing out of a plane carrying the US Mail somewhere south of Chicago. It was the second time in as many months that he had crashed a plane carrying the mail, either because of fog, equipment problems, or just running out of fuel. Each time he parachuted safely to the ground, and each time he recovered the mail. These were not his only accidents, either. He frequently mangled propellers upon landing, wound up in a ditch one time, and was involved in a mid-air collision another. But then, he had only been flying solo for three and a half years.
Three months after plowing his second mail plane into the ground, he quit the mail service and began overseeing the construction of a new aircraft he called the Spirit of St. Louis. When Lindbergh took off on May 20, 1927, six better known aviators had already died trying to make the flight between New York and Paris. He couldn't have been confident of the outcome, but much to everyone's surprise, he landed safely in France the next day. He became an instant hero around the world.
Lindbergh was a prolific father. His wife bore him six children, the first of which was kidnapped and killed in what became known as "The Crime of the Century". He also fathered seven more children by the three mistresses he kept in Europe, including two sisters in Bavaria. He died 34 years ago.
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