"When Lindbergh was four years old, Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional
District elected his father, Charles August Lindbergh, to the U.S. House
of Representatives. The elder Lindbergh would serve five terms in
Congress, where he won a reputation for his independent stances and
fierce opposition to the Federal Reserve System. Congressman Lindbergh
was among the few members of the House to speak out against U.S.
involvement in World War I, and was later censored and accused of
sedition after writing an anti-war pamphlet called “Why is Your Country
at War?”
<span>
He worked as a daredevil and stunt pilot.
</span>
After learning to fly at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation in
Lincoln, Lindbergh spent two years years as an itinerant stuntman and
aerial daredevil. During “barnstorming” excursions through the American
heartland, the young aviator wowed audiences with daring displays of
wing-walking, parachuting and mid-air plane changes. After purchasing
his own plane, he became one of the nation’s top stunt pilots, often
twisting his machine into complicated loops and spins or killing the
engine at 3,000 feet and gliding to ground. Despite the hazardous nature
of stunt flying, “Lucky Lindy’s” closest brushes with death would come
during his time as a U.S. Army flier, test pilot and airmail pilot, when
he survived a record four plane crashes by bailing out and parachuting
to safety.
<span>
He wasn’t the first person to make a transatlantic crossing in an airplane.
</span>
In the years before Charles Lindbergh’s New York to Paris flight,
dozens of other pioneering aviators completed airborne crossings of the
Atlantic. Most made the journey in multiple stages or used
lighter-than-air dirigibles, but in 1919, British pilots John Alcock and
Arthur Brown famously flew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland in a
Vickers Vimy biplane before crash landing in a bog. Lindbergh’s major
achievement was not that he was the first person to cross the Atlantic
by airplane, but rather that he did it alone and between two major
international cities.
<span>
He experienced hallucinations and saw mirages during his famous flight.
</span>
Along with the perils of navigating the foggy Atlantic, Lindbergh’s
biggest challenge during his transatlantic flight was simply staying
awake. Between his pre-flight preparations and the 33.5-hour journey
itself, he went some 55 hours without sleep. Lindbergh went so far as to
buzz the surface of the ocean in the hope that the chilly sea spray
would help keep him awake, but 24 hours into the journey, he became
delirious from lack of rest. He later wrote of mirage-like “fog islands”
forming in the sea below, and of seeing “vaguely outlined forms,
transparent, moving, riding weightless with me in the plane.” Lindbergh
even claimed the apparitions spoke to him and offered words of wisdom
for his journey. The hallucinations eventually faded, and only a few
hours later, the exhausted aviator landed in Paris to a crowd of more
than 150,000 jubilant spectators."
