THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Lindbergh, Charles ___ 1902-1974 ___
American ___ aviator
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Lindbergh, the son of Swedish immigrants
(his father became a lawyer and congressman, his mother a chemistry teacher),
grew up on a farm near Little Falls in Minnesota. He began to study engineering
at the University of Wisconsin but left after two years to fly daredevil
stunts at fairs. In 1924, he enlisted in the army, was trained to fly, and
then joined the Robertson Aircraft Corporation as a pilot. In 1927, Lindbergh
took up a $25,000 challenge, that had stood since 1919, to fly non-stop
from New York to Paris. Several St Louis businessmen helped finance the
cost of a plane, which he helped design, and on 20 May he made his famous
flight of around 5,600km in under 34 hours. Thereafter, he became a celebrity,
and an active campaigner, partly backed by Harry Guggenheim, for the further
development of aeronautics. While in Mexico on a promotion trip, he met
Anne Spencer Morrow, the daughter of the American ambassador. They married
in 1929; he taught her to fly and they did many trips throughout the world.
In 1932, their toddler son, Charles, was kidnapped. Ten weeks later the
body was found. Five years later in 1934 Bruno Richard Hauptmann was charged
with the murder. He was executed in 1936. Before then, however, the Lindberghs
and a second son (four other children were to follow) had moved to England
to escape the press. Lindbergh attracted more public attention when he accepted
a German medal of honour from Goering. After returning to the US in 1939,
Lindbergh campaigned against US involvement in the European war, and was
accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. After Pearl Harbor, though, he sought
involvement in the war, and ended up flying about 50 combat missions even
though he was a civilian. He also helped develop aviation techniques. After
the War, Lindbergh worked as an adviser for government and industry. His
'The Spirit of St Louis', an expanded account of the 1927 flight, won a
Pulitzer Prize. In the 1960s, he campaigned on environmental issues. From
1957 until his death, Lindbergh maintained a secret affair with Brigitte
Hesshaimer, a German hatmaker, who had three children by him.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1938-1945 ___ military political
people transport Nazism
WEB TEXT LINKS
article
and good selection of extracts
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Yale
University Library
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Wartime Journals
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |