From Today I Found Out.

On the evening of May 21, 1927, a crowd of 150,000 people crowded Paris’s le Bourget airport to witness a historic event. Around 10:15 PM, a droning sound was heard in the distance, and moments later a small silver aircraft swooped into view, shimmering in the glare of the runway lights. The plane had barely rolled to a halt when the crowd descended upon it, tearing scraps of fabric from the fuselage as souvenirs and hoisting the pilot onto their shoulders in triumph. That pilot, 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh, had just flown his aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, 5,800 kilometres from New York to Paris, crossing the Atlantic in 33 hours, 30 minutes. But while his pioneering flight would forever be fêted as one of the key milestones in aviation history, “Lucky Lindy” was not, in fact, the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic – nor the second, nor the third, or even the fiftieth. He was simply the first to make a nonstop, solo crossing between two major city centres. While his was certainly a monumental feat, Lindbergh stood on the shoulders of dozens of pilots who risked – and sometimes lost – their lives to conquer the treacherous Atlantic and make the world just a little bit smaller. This is the story of those forgotten pilots.

Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila