Daily Trivia #270 Flight Of The Century

The Spirit of St. Louis is the custom-built monoplane that was flown solo by Charles Lindbergh on May 20–21, 1927, on the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

Hotel Lafayette in New York City, whose owner Raymond Orteig (1870–1939) offered the Orteig Prize (won by Lindberg) for the first non-stop transatlantic flight between New York and Paris.

Within 5 years of his historic flight Lindbergh was a rich man. But his good fortune was short lived, when Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was abducted from his home in New Jersey, on the evening of March 1, 1932. The media termed it the "Crime of the Century"; Agatha Christie was inspired by circumstances of the case when she described the kidnapping of baby girl Daisy Armstrong in her 1934 Hercule Poirot novel Murder on the Orient Express. Also made into a film of the same name in 1974. Above is its poster.

Lindbergh studied the perfusion of organs outside the body with Nobel Prize-winning French surgeon Dr. Alexis Carrel; Lindbergh's invention, a glass perfusion pump, named the "Model T" pump, is credited with making future heart surgeries possible; Also in 1938, Lindbergh and Carrel summarized their work in their book, The Culture of Organs described an artificial heart.

Charles F. Muntz, the main antagonist in the movie Up (2009) was inspired by Charles Lindbergh.

Less than three weeks after the flight the U.S. Post Office Department issued a 10-cent "Lindbergh Air Mail" stamp (Scott C-10) on June 11, 1927 with engraved illustrations of both the Spirit of St. Louis and a map of its route from New York to Paris.