Martin Rivers, age 14, of Keen, N.H., for his question:
WHO WAS CHARLES LINDBERG?
Charles Lindberg was the American airplane pilot who made the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York City to Paris, France. The record breaking event was made in 1927.
A New York City hotel owner by the name of Raymond Orteig in 1919 had offered a prize of $25,000 to the first aviator who could make the nonstop flight. For eight years no one had even attempted the feat.
Then Lindberg decided he would win the prize. His airplane was called the Spirit of St. Louis. As a warm up he set a coast to coast record by flying from San Diego, Calif., to Long Island, N.Y., in 21 hours and 20 minutes. On this flight he stopped overnight in St. Louis, Mo.
Ten days later Lindberg started his transatlantic flight. He took off from Roosevelt Field in New York at 7:52 a.m. on Friday, May 10, 1927, and he landed at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 5:24 p.m. the next day, or at 10:24 p.m. Paris time. He had traveled 3,600 miles in 33 hours and 32 minutes.
Lindberg became an international hero immediately after the flight. France gave him the Legion of Honor, the English presented him with the Royal Air Cross and the Order of Leopold went to him from Belgium. When he returned to the United States, President Calvin Coolidge honored him with the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was also made a colonel in the Air Reserve.
And there was more than just the $25,000 cash prize. The New York Times paid him $250,000 for his story of the flight and his book called "We" became an international best seller. A tour took Lindberg and his Spirit of St. Louis to 73 American cities sponsored by the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics. And he topped off the tour by flying nonstop from Washington, D.C., to Mexico City.
Lindberg's flight stirred the imagination of many people who had thought of flying only as a stunt. It also aroused commercial interest in air transportation more than any other event in aviation history.
Today Lindberg's Spirit of St. Louis is on display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
In 1929 Lindberg married Anne Morrow, an American poet and essayist, who was also a licensed pilot and radio operator. The two made many flights together. They set a new transcontinental record in 1930 and in 1931 they flew across Canada, Alaska and the Bering Strait to Asia. They then went down the coast of Japan and China, where they flew over the flooded Yangtze River Valley in which 250,000 had drowned. They mapped out the areas that moat needed help.
In 1949 Lindberg won the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy for significant public service of enduring value to aviation. In 1954 his autobiography "The Spirit of St. Louis" won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Lindberg won many other honors, including the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Lindberg died of cancer at the age of 72 in 1974.