Charles Augustus Lindbergh

Lindbergh, Charles Augustus (1902–74), U.S. aviator who made the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic, in 33 1/2 hours, on May 21, 1927, in The Spirit of St. Louis. The flight made him a popular hero. The kidnapping and murder of his son in 1932 led to a federal law on kidnapping, popularly known as the Lindbergh Act. Lindbergh and his wife, the writer Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh, moved to England in 1936. Criticized for his pro-German, isolationist stance in 1938–41, Lindbergh resigned his commission in the air reserves, but he later flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific during World War II. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, The Spirit of Saint Louis (1953).