The Birth of Flight - Page 7

	Charles Lindbergh Crosses the Atlantic May 21, 1927				Orville Wright, Major John F. Curry, and Colonel Charles Lindbergh June 22, 1927

On May 21, 1927, Charles Augustus Lindbergh completed the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first ever nonstop flight between New York and Paris. His single-engine monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, had lifted off from Roosevelt Field in New York 33 ½ hours before. Though Lindbergh had struggled to stay awake, sometimes forced to hold his eyelids open with his fingers, and had experienced hallucinations that ghosts were passing through the cockpit, amazingly he completed the 3,600 mile journey. He became an immediate international celebrity. The aviation age, launched by the Wright brothers, was now solidly in place.