The flying hat aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh lost while doing loop-the-loops over Paris after becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic goes under the hammer at the Hôtel Drouot house in Paris on 16 November.
The leather and sheepskin cap which Lindbergh managed to lose twice in the space of a week after making history in May 1927, could fetch up to €80,000 ($88,000).
In May 1928, days after his plane, The Spirit of St Louis, landed in France after his record-breaking nonstop Atlantic crossing, Charles Lindbergh lost his flying helmet.
Lindbergh Lost Flying Hat
A mechanic handed the hat in to the US embassy that evening only for Lindbergh to lose it again seven days later when he was given special permission to perform aerobatic feats over the city in a borrowed French fighter.
The following day, a woman discovered the hat in her vegetable patch, she took it home and kept it. The hat has been kept by the same family since. It wasn’t actually identified as Lindbergh’s until 1969.
Lindbergh returned to the US a hero, but six year later was hit by tragedy when his baby son, Charles Junior, was kidnapped from the family home. The body of the 20-month-old was later found nearby.
Lindbergh Lost Flying Hat
