Charles Augustus Lindbergh Lindbergh, Charles Augustus (1902-1974), American aviator, engineer, and Pulitzer Prize winner, who was the first person to make a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic. Lindbergh was born February 4, 1902, in Detroit. He attended the University of Wisconsin for two years but withdrew to attend a flying school in Lincoln, Nebraska. He began flying in 1922, and four years later he piloted a mail plane between St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago. He decided to compete for a prize of $25,000 offered in 1919 by the Franco-American philanthropist Raymond B. Orteig of New York