Celebrating the 87th anniversary of the first Transatlantic flight May 20th 1927 by the great Charles Lindberg with this rare French silk tapestry found a couple of month ago.In 1957 Lindberg offered a similar tapestry to Jimmy Stewart, Who played him,in "the spirit of st Louis" Movie......
On May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off from Long Island, New York at 7:52 a.m. After a night of heavy rain, the weather had cleared. Lindbergh seized the opportunity to take off while a crowd of 500 spectators cheered him .
To keep the plane as light as possible, Lindbergh flew without a radio, navigational lights, gas gauges, or parachutes. He carried only a compass, a sextant, his maps of the area, and several fuel tanks. He had even replaced the pilot's chair with a lightweight seat.
Lindbergh flew through several storms in the North Atlantic. When darkness fell and exhaustion set in, Lindbergh brought the plane up to a higher elevation so that he could see the stars, keeping himself oriented. As fatigue swept over him, he stamped his feet, sang aloud, and even slapped his own face.
After flying through the night and the following day, Lindbergh finally spotted fishing boats and Ireland's rugged coastline. He had made it to Europe. At 10:24 p.m. on May 21, 1927, he landed at Le Bourget Airport in Paris and was stunned to find 150,000 people waiting to celebrate his remarkable accomplishment. Thirty-three and a half hours had passed since he had taken off from New York.
Hailed as a hero, the shy young pilot from Minnesota was unwillingly thrust into the public eye. Lindbergh's unwelcome fame would later haunt him when his infant son was kidnapped for ransom and killed in 1932.
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