Category: Heroism

Charles Lindbergh was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air non-stop, in 1927.

Wrong: the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by air was by John Alcock and Arthur Brown, some eight years earlier.

Yet while we all remember Lindbergh, Alcock and Brown aren’t acknowledged often, not even by their own country on the centenary of their achievement:

Two WWI heroes made the first transatlantic flight fuelled only by sandwiches, a flask of coffee and raw courage to win £10,000 Daily Mail prize. So why 100 years on is Britain doing nothing to remember these magnificent men?

Oh, please.  I can think of several reasons.

• White men
• Worse yet, heterosexual  White men
• War veterans mongers
• Didn’t even try  to recruit female- or POC crew members
• Leaving from a country stolen from the native peoples by colonialist oppressors
• Using an aircraft once used as a weapon of war to bomb helpless civilians
• Burning countless gallons of fuel, i.e. a leaving a massive carbon footprint
• Showing up less brave, less able people by a pointless act of so-called “heroism”
• Their sandwiches contained meat, and their coffee wasn’t “Fair Trade”.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  I’m just surprised that their existing monuments haven’t been destroyed by now.