Around 10:20pm, a tiny dot appeared in the skies above Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris, France.
A crowd of thousands of people, happy and slightly drunk, waiting at the airport, started to cheer and push forward. Men took off their hats and waved them in the air. Women, a little more dignified, kept their hats on.
The dot grew larger. It was now visibly a gray and white monoplane.
At 10:22pm on May 21 1927, exactly 95 years ago, the plane landed. The drunk and happy crowd ran out onto the tarmac and immediately surrounded it on all sides.
Out of the plane, a slim, worn-looking young man staggered out and raised his hand in greeting. After 55 hours of non-stop flying, across more than 3,600 miles, he had finally done it.
An incredible feat. Celebrated around the globe.
Worthy of being remembered even a century later.
Charles Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, had become the third man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic.
Yes, third.
What? That’s not how you know the story? You know Lindbergh as the 25-year old flier who gained instant worldwide fame by becoming the first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic?
I’m here to tell you it wasn’t so. In June 1919, two British fliers, John Alcock and Arthur Brown, made the first nonstop transatlantic flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Ireland.
Sure, Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris was longer, almost double the length. And he was flying solo.
But on the other hand, Alcock and Brown did it eight years earlier, with much wonkier technology — planes were developing fast in those days. So perhaps their feat was braver and more impressive than Lindbergh’s.
It’s kind of a puzzle, isn’t it?
Why did Charles Lindbergh become an instantaneous celebrity by flying across the Atlantic? And why has nobody ever told you, until I told you today, that two other guys flew across the Atlantic almost a decade earlier?
I’ll give you one good reason:
Spectacle.
Lindbergh was flying to win a much talked-about prize of $25,000, worth over $415,000 in today’s money, put up by a French-American businessman, and left unclaimed for over 8 years.
Days before the famous transatlantic flight, Lindbergh flew from San Diego to New York, setting a record for the fastest transcontinental crossing, and building up anticipation and interest.
Also, 1927 was a mostly peaceful and stable year in Europe and the U.S. Newspapers were hungry for a story, and young Lindy was a good-looking kid.
And then, there were all the idle and drunk crowds in New York, the idle and drunk crowds in Paris, the American ambassador to France putting in an appearance, and a collection of the best French aviators at the time, circling the Paris skies in anticipation of Lindbergh’s arrival.
Poor Alcock and Brown didn’t have any of those advantages. And that’s why nobody ever celebrates them today.
So my point is:
If you want people to remember you, get yourself some spectacle.
Think big. Create anticipation. Enlist slightly drunken crowds to stand around and cheer as you do whatever it is that you do.
It can turn you into worldwide celebrity, a daredevil star, someone who is talked about for years or decades or even a century later.
Or if your ambitions are smaller, and mainly focus on making money and having a business, it will give you positioning. The kind of positioning that others in your industry, who were there long before you — working hard, risking it all, for not much acclaim — will eat themselves alive for.
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