Charles Lindbergh Trivia
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58 free Charles Lindbergh trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Charles Lindbergh trivia quiz covers the air mail pilot who became the most famous man on Earth in 33 hours. It starts with the flight: the Orteig Prize and the men who died chasing it, the plane Ryan built in 60 days with a periscope instead of a windscreen, Dingle Bay, the mob at Le Bourget, Coolidge's medals and Time's first Man of the Year. Then it follows the tour of all 48 states, the marriage to Anne Morrow and the perfusion pump built with Alexis Carrel. The second half is darker: the ladder under the nursery window, the ransom in gold certificates, Jafsie and Al Capone, Hauptmann's trial and the Lindbergh Law; the years in Kent, the Nazi contacts, America First and the Des Moines speech; then the 50 Pacific combat missions, the Pulitzer, James Stewart on film, the environmental crusades, Apollo 11, the grave on Maui and the German families revealed by DNA. About a third of the questions are easy; the rest reward anyone who has read A. Scott Berg. Try our aviation history and Amelia Earhart quizzes next. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Lindbergh, the Spirit of St. Louis, the kidnapping and related topics, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which children's author mocked Lindbergh's isolationism in a run of wartime newspaper cartoons?
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss, before the children's classics, drew more than 400 political cartoons for the New York paper PM, and Lindbergh's campaign against entering the war was a favourite target.
Q 02Lindbergh's aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, was named in honour of what?
The city whose backers financed it
The city whose backers financed it. Lindbergh was flying the mail from there when he persuaded a group of local businessmen to pay for the attempt, and the plane carried their city's name to Paris.
Q 03How much was the Orteig Prize that Lindbergh's flight won?
$25,000
$25,000. Hotel owner Raymond Orteig put it up in 1919 for five years; nobody even tried in that time, so he renewed the offer, and Lindbergh collected the cheque eight years after it was first posted.
Q 04What did Lindbergh struggle against for much of his 33½-hour flight to Paris?
The urge to sleep
The urge to sleep. He had barely slept the night before, and over the ocean he kept dozing off for seconds at a time and began to hallucinate; the drowsiness lifted only after a full day in the air.
Q 05Which British pair had already flown the Atlantic nonstop in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh?
Alcock and Brown
Alcock and Brown. They took off from Newfoundland and ended nose-down in a bog; Lindbergh's New York to Paris route was nearly twice as long, and he flew it alone.
Q 06In which state did Lindbergh grow up, on a farm beside the upper Mississippi?
Minnesota
Minnesota was home: born in Detroit, he grew up on the family farm at Little Falls, and during World War I he earned his high-school credits by working it instead of sitting his final exams.
Q 07What was the occupation of Lindbergh's father, Charles August Lindbergh?
US congressman
US congressman: C. A. Lindbergh sat in the House from 1907 to 1917, where he was one of the few members to oppose America entering World War I.
Q 08Lindbergh left which university midway through his second year to learn to fly?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin: he was studying engineering in Madison, but with his grades sinking he left in 1922 for a flying school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and went up for the first time days after arriving.
Q 09As a barnstorming stunt performer in the early 1920s, Lindbergh was billed under what name?
Daredevil Lindbergh
Daredevil Lindbergh was the name on the leaflets: he stood on the wings and hung beneath other pilots' planes before buying an aircraft of his own to fly the stunts himself.
Q 10Which war-surplus biplane was the first aircraft Lindbergh owned, bought in 1923?
Curtiss Jenny
Curtiss Jenny: he bought the wartime trainer at a Georgia airfield and made his first solo flight in it there, having never flown alone or held a licence.
Q 11In which state did Lindbergh graduate first in his class from Army flight school in 1925?
Texas
Texas: he trained at Brooks and Kelly Fields in San Antonio, where fewer than one in five of the 104 cadets who started won their wings, and he left as a second lieutenant in the air reserve.
Q 12As an airmail pilot in 1926, how did Lindbergh twice save himself when caught aloft at night?
Parachuted out
He parachuted out: bad weather and empty fuel tanks left him unable to land on the night run into Chicago, and both times he reached the ground without serious injury.
Q 13Which San Diego firm built the Spirit of St. Louis for Lindbergh?
Ryan Airlines
Q 21What did the Paris crowd do to Lindbergh's plane after he landed?
Tore pieces off it
Tore pieces off it: souvenir hunters stripped what they could from the plane while others carried its pilot around, until soldiers and police got it under guard.
Q 22Which two French war heroes vanished flying from Paris to New York days before Lindbergh's flight?
Nungesser and Coli
Nungesser and Coli set off in their biplane L'Oiseau Blanc and were never found, which left the prize open just as Lindbergh was about to fly east from San Diego.
Q 23Which polar explorer raced Lindbergh for the Orteig Prize?
Richard Byrd
Ryan Airlines quoted $10,580 and 60 days, and Lindbergh moved out to the factory to work on the design beside its chief engineer, Donald Hall.
Q 14Which US record did Lindbergh break days before leaving for Paris?
Coast-to-coast speed
Coast-to-coast speed: the Spirit of St. Louis, built in 60 days, flew San Diego to New York with one stop in under 22 flying hours, as he hurried to get there before rival crews could leave for Paris.
Q 15Why did the Spirit of St. Louis have no forward windscreen?
A fuel tank sat in front of the cockpit
A fuel tank sat in front of the cockpit because Lindbergh did not want to be crushed between tank and engine in a crash; he saw ahead through a periscope or by turning to look out of a side window.
Q 16From which Long Island airfield did Lindbergh take off on his flight to Paris?
Roosevelt Field
Roosevelt Field: the plane, heavy with fuel, bounced down a muddy runway and cleared the telephone wires at the far end by only about twenty feet.
Q 17What engine powered the Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic?
A Wright Whirlwind radial
A Wright Whirlwind radial was the plane's only engine: while several rivals trusted three, Lindbergh argued that one saved weight for fuel and meant fewer chances of an engine failing.
Q 18To save weight, what was the pilot's seat in the Spirit of St. Louis made of?
Wicker
Wicker: a light woven chair took the place of a heavy leather seat, part of a purge in which Lindbergh also left out a radio and trimmed the edges off his maps.
Q 19What was the first European land Lindbergh saw on his flight?
Dingle Bay, Ireland
Dingle Bay, Ireland: unsure at first, he turned towards the nearest point of land, matched the coastline to his chart, then swung back onto his compass course for Paris.
Q 20At which Paris airfield did Lindbergh land at the end of his Atlantic flight?
Le Bourget
Le Bourget was overrun as he landed: the crowd pulled Lindbergh from the cockpit and carried him above their heads before he could be hurried away to a hangar.
Richard Byrd's three-engined Fokker, America, crashed in testing in April 1927, and the little-known Lindbergh took off while the famous explorer still waited on Long Island.
Q 24Which president presented Lindbergh with both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Medal of Honor?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge sent a Navy warship to bring Lindbergh and his plane home from Europe, then decorated him in front of a vast crowd in Washington.
Q 25Which Agatha Christie novel took its central crime from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping?
Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express appeared in 1934, before anyone had been arrested for the real crime, and builds its plot on the kidnap and killing of a rich American family's small daughter.
Q 26What was the title of Lindbergh's first book, a bestseller written weeks after his Atlantic flight?
We
We was rushed out that summer and sold some 650,000 copies in its first year, helped by the 48-state tour he was flying as it reached the shops.
Q 27Which wealthy family's aeronautics fund sent Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis on a tour of all 48 states?
Guggenheim
Guggenheim: Daniel Guggenheim's fund for promoting aeronautics paid for the three-month tour so that Lindbergh could sell the public on commercial air travel.
Q 28Which museum displays the original Spirit of St. Louis, donated by Lindbergh in 1928?
National Air and Space Museum, Washington
National Air and Space Museum, Washington: Lindbergh flew the plane to the capital himself in April 1928 and handed it to the Smithsonian, which has shown it ever since.
Q 29Lindbergh met his future wife Anne Morrow in which country, where her father was US ambassador?
Mexico
Mexico: he flew nonstop from Washington to Mexico City on a goodwill visit, spent Christmas with Ambassador Dwight Morrow's family and married Anne in 1929.
Q 30Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the first woman in the United States to earn which licence?
Glider pilot
Glider pilot: she went on to fly with her husband as copilot, navigator and radio operator, surveying air routes across the Arctic to Asia.