After making his final preparations, on the rainy morning of May 20, 1927 at 7:52 am, Charles Lindbergh took off from the muddy runway at Roosevelt Field heading east. He was heavily overloaded with gas and he barely staggered over the trees at the end of the field. After an exhausting flight of 33 hours 30 minutes, Lindbergh safely arrived in Paris. This single event instantly revolutionized and popularized aviation as nothing else before or since. It clearly and dramatically showed the fantastic future potential of the airplane.

My eyes feel dry and hard as stones. The lids pull down with pounds of weight against the muscles. Everything is uniform blackness, except for the exhaust’s flash on passing mist and the glowing dials in my cockpit, so different from all other lights…My world and my life are compressed within these fabric walls.
– Charles A. Lindbergh, 1927