Charles Lindbergh, American Aviator

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 - August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist. Lindbergh gained world fame as the result of his solo non-stop flight on May 20-21, 1927, made from Roosevelt Field, Garden City, Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France, a distance of nearly 3, 600 statute miles, in the single-seat, single-engine purpose built Ryan monoplane Spirit of St. Louis. He was also awarded the nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his historic exploit. Lindbergh used his fame to promote the development of both commercial aviation and Air Mail services in the United States and the Americas. In March 1932, however, his infant son, Charles, Jr. was kidnapped and murdered in what was soon dubbed the Crime of the Century'. The Lindbergh family went into voluntary exile in Europe in late December 1935 and did not return to the United States until 1939. Lindbergh was a leader in the anti-war America First movement, he nevertheless strongly supported the war effort after Pearl Harbor and flew many combat missions in the Pacific Theater of World War II as a civilian consultant even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt had refused to reinstate his Army Air Corps colonel's commission that he had resigned in April 1941. In his later years, Lindbergh became a prolific prize-winning author, international explorer, inventor, and environmentalist. Lindbergh spent his final years on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he died of lymphoma in 1974 at age 72

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