4 February: Charles Lindbergh

Born on this date in 1902 was Captain Charles Lindbergh. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, Charles August Lindbergh, served five terms in Congress and was among the few members of the House to speak out against U.S. involvement in World War I. Lindberg himself would later become a major opponent of U.S. involvement in WWII. He was branded as a traitor and anti-Semite for this and barred from serving in the war when it came. Lindbergh went to the battle front anyway as a civilian observer, and while he was there, flew around 50 combat missions and even shot down a Japanese fighter plane.

2. He was fascinated by transport and mechanics from an early age and learned to fly at the age of 20. At first, though, he wasn’t allowed to fly solo because he couldn’t afford to pay for a damage bond.

3. He spent some time working as a stunt pilot and aerial daredevil. Another of his earlier jobs was delivering airmail between St. Louis and Chicago.

4. He also served as a US Army flyer during which time he survived a record four plane crashes by bailing out and parachuting to safety.

5. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first non-stop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance of 3,600 miles, flying alone for 33.5 hours in a plane called The Spirit of St. Louis. While he wasn’t the first to fly the Atlantic (see Alcock and Brown), he was the first to do so alone and between two major cities. His motivation was a $25,000 award for the first successful non-stop transatlantic flight specifically between New York City and Paris (in either direction). It wasn’t easy, of course, and he would later report that he started hallucinating during the flight from lack of sleep.

6. When he flew The Spirit of St. Louis from Washington D.C. to Mexico City later that year, he met his future wife, Anne Morrow, the daughter of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow, while in Mexico. Anne became Lindbergh’s trusted copilot and radio operator, and the couple made several groundbreaking flights together. However, his flying commitments meant he was only home for a few months each year and once they had kids, he was often absent. He insisted that Anne kept detailed records of household expenditure and any naughtiness on the part of his children, including small things like chewing gum. Not that he was behaving himself. He had affairs with at least three other women and had two other families in Germany. Another foible was that he hated holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and would not let his family celebrate either. However, seeing as he was away from home so much, they did sometimes celebrate Mother’s Day while he was away.

7. One of his children was famously kidnapped on 1 March 1932. Charles Lindbergh, Jr. was 20 months old when he disappeared. The family received many offers of assistance, including one from Al Capone. The gangster put up a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators. Lindbergh didn’t accept the offer. That May, the baby was found dead, only a few miles from the family home. A German immigrant named Richard Hauptmann made the fatal mistake of using one of the ransom bills to pay for petrol. He was convicted of murder and executed in 1936.

8. He helped invent an early artificial Heart. His brother’s wife had heart disease which inspired him to team up with a Nobel Prize-winning French surgeon called Alexis Carrel and they managed to devise a pump made from Pyrex which helped pave the way for the development of the first true artificial organs.

9. He also teamed up with a rocket scientist called Robert Goddard who was experimenting with liquid-fuelled rockets in the late 1920s. When Apollo 8 became the first manned space mission to orbit the Moon in 1968, Lindbergh sent the astronauts a message saying, “You have turned into reality the dream of Robert Goddard.”

10. He was also a proponent of conservation and used his travels to lobby for the environment. He campaigned to save blue and Humpback Whales, tortoises, tamaraws and eagles, saying that he would rather have “birds than airplanes.” Before his death in 1974, he also lived among indigenous tribes in Africa and the Philippines and helped procure land for the formation of Haleakala National Park in Hawaii.