The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: May twentieth, remembering the flights of Lucky Lindy and Lady Lindy.

Seventy-five years ago today, as dawn was just breaking over Roosevelt Field outside New York City, a brash, young pilot eased forward the throttle of a plane he'd purchased just three months earlier. Heavy with fuel, the plane lurched over the muddy runway; observers feared it might not clear electric wires at the runway's end. But at 7:52, the Spirit of Saint Louis broke free of the earth.

Over 33 hours later, when Charles A. Lindbergh landed amid cheering crowds at Le Bourget field in Paris, he'd won the $25,000 Ortieg Prize for the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. Only two weeks earlier, two famous French fliers had disappeared in a similar attempt. Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic electrified the world and made him a wealthy, famous man. The events of his life are chronicled in a new Diamond Anniversary exhibition "Lindbergh," at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis.

But another trans-Atlantic flight first was recorded on this day in 1932, when Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross it alone. An earlier flight across the Atlantic as a co-pilot had earned her the nickname Lady Lindy, but proud and self-reliant Earhart wanted more respect. On the evening of May 20th, she nosed her Vega Five B into the air from St. John's Newfoundland. Only ten minutes of fuel remained inn her tanks the next morning when she found the first suitable place to land, a Irish cow pasture. "Where am I?" she asked the startled farmer.

"In Derry, Sir," he told the grease-covered aviatrix. "How far have you come?" He was amazed at her answer. "From America."

FMI For info on the "Lindbergh" exhibition, Missouri History Museum 314-746-4599 or www.mohistory.org

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