Charles Lindbergh

Raised in Minnesota, the son of a congressman, Lindbergh became an Air Mail pilot in St. Louis and began planning a New York-to-Paris run for a $25,000 prize. On May 20-21, 1927, he made the 3,600-mile crossing solo in the Spirit of St. Louis, the longest flight yet attempted, igniting a worldwide aviation boom. Time named him its first Man of the Year; he won the Medal of Honor and spent years promoting commercial flight. In 1931 he partnered with surgeon Alexis Carrel to invent an early perfusion pump, a forerunner to heart surgery technology, though the device proved impractical. Then in 1932 his infant son was kidnapped and killed in what the press called the crime of the century, driving the family to Europe by 1935. He returned in 1939 and joined the isolationist America First Committee; his statements about Jews and race before Pearl Harbor led Roosevelt to publicly rebuke him, and Lindbergh resigned his Army commission in April 1941. After the U.S. entered the war he flew 50 combat missions as a civilian consultant in the Pacific. Eisenhower restored his rank in 1954, promoting him to brigadier general, and he spent his final decades writing, exploring,