Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, military officer, author and activist. At age 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U. S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize for making a nonstop flight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh covered the ​33 1⁄2-hour, 3,600-statute-mile flight alone in a purpose-built, single-engine Ryan monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Although not the first non-stop transatlantic flight, this was the first solo transatlantic flight, the first transatlantic flight between two major city hubs, the longest transatlantic flight by 2,000 miles, thus it is known as a turning point in the trajectory of aviation history and advancement. Lindbergh was an officer in the U. S. Army Air Corps Reserve, he received the United States' highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his transatlantic flight, his achievement spurred interest in both commercial aviation and air mail, which revolutionized the aviation industry, he devoted much time and effort to promoting such activity.

Lindbergh's historic flight and celebrity status led to tragedy. In March 1932, his infant son, Charles Jr. was kidnapped and murdered in what the American media called the "Crime of the Century". The case prompted the United States Congress to establish kidnapping as a federal crime once the kidnapper had crossed state lines with their victim. By late 1935, the hysteria surrounding the case had driven the Lindbergh family into exile in Europe, from which they returned in 1939. Before the United States entered World War II, Lindbergh was an advocate of non-interventionism and a supporter of Nazi Germany, he opposed not only the intervention of the United States, but the granting of aid to the United Kingdom. He supported the anti-war America First Committee and resigned his commission in the U. S. Army Air Forces in April 1941 after President Franklin Roosevelt publicly rebuked him for his views. In September 1941, Lindbergh gave an address stating that the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt administration were the "three most important groups" pressing for greater American involvement in the war.

He said capitalists, American Anglophiles, communists were all agitating for war. Lindbergh publicly supported the U. S. war effort after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war against the United States. He flew 50 missions in the Pacific Theater of World War II as a civilian consultant, but did not take up arms against Germany, Roosevelt refused to reinstate his Air Corps colonel's commission. In his years, Lindbergh became a prolific author, international explorer and environmentalist. Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan on February 4, 1902 and spent most of his childhood in Little Falls and Washington, D. C, he was the third child of Charles August Lindbergh who had emigrated from Sweden to Melrose, Minnesota as an infant, his only child with his second wife, Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh, of Detroit. Charles' parents separated in 1909. Lindbergh's father, a U. S. Congressman from 1907 to 1917, was one of the few Congressmen to oppose the entry of the U.

S. into World War I. His book, Why Is Your Country at War, which criticized the US' entry into the first World War, was seized by federal agents under the Comstock Act, it was posthumously reprinted and issued in 1934, under the title Your Country at War, What Happens to You After a War. Lindbergh's mother was a chemistry teacher at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and at Little Falls High School, from which her son graduated on June 5, 1918. Lindbergh attended over a dozen other schools from Washington, D. C. to California, during his childhood and teenage years, including the Force School and Sidwell Friends School while living in Washington with his father, Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, while living there with his mother. Although he enrolled in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in late 1920, Lindbergh dropped out in the middle of his sophomore year and went to Lincoln, Nebraska, in March 1922 to begin flight training. From an early age, Lindbergh had exhibited an interest in the mechanics of motorized transportation, including his family's Saxon Six automobile, his Excelsior motorbike.

By the time he started college as a mechanical engineering student, he had become fascinated with flying, though he "had never been close enough to a plane to touch it". After quitting college in February 1922, Lindbergh enrolled at the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation's flying school in Lincoln and flew for the first time on April 9, as a passenger in a two-seat Lincoln Standard "Tourabout" biplane trainer piloted by Otto Timm. A few days Lindbergh took his first formal flying lesson in that same machine, though he was never permitted to solo because he could not afford to post the requisite damage bond. To gain flight experience and earn money for further instruction, Lindbergh left Lincoln in June to spend the next few months barnstorming across Nebraska, Colorado and Montana as a wing walker and parachutist, he briefly worked as an airplane mechanic at the Billings, municipal airport. Lindbergh returned to his father's home in Minnesota, his return to the air and first solo flight did not come until half a year in May 1923 at Souther Field in Americus, Georgia, a former Army flight training field, where

This Is War is the third studio album by American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars, released on December 8, 2009 through Virgin Records and EMI. It was the band's first studio album in four years, after the breakthrough of their previous work, A Beautiful Lie; the album was recorded over a span of two years, while the band was in the midst of a legal dispute with Virgin over an alleged breach-of-contract. The case was settled in April 2009, the band signed to EMI that year; the album marked a departure from the band's previous material, implementing a more experimental direction that draws influence from progressive rock, new wave and heavy metal music. Lyrically, it is a conceptual record shaped by the band's personal struggles and legal battle with their record label, is somewhat considered a rock opera, it was accompanied by the documentary film Artifact. This Is War received general acclaim from critics, who praised its instrumentation and experimental direction, was nominated for the Echo Music Prize.

It reached the top ten of several national album charts and has since sold over four million copies worldwide. The record was promoted through the Into the Wild Tour, which earned the band a Guinness World Record for most live shows during a single album cycle, with 300 shows. Thirty Seconds to Mars were sued for breach-of-contract by their record label, Virgin Records, in mid-2008; the label sought $30 million in damages, claiming that the band had failed to produce three of the five records they were obliged to deliver under their 1999 contract with the now-defunct Immortal Records. In 2004, Virgin took over the contract. Jared Leto responded to some of the claims in the suit on the band's website and was coerced into dismissing rumors that the group had disbanded, he said the claims were "ridiculously overblown" and "totally unrealistic", before stating "under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than seven years." Thirty Seconds to Mars had been contracted for nine years, so the band decided to exercise their "legal right to terminate our old, out-of-date contract, which according to the law is null and void."After nearly a year of the lawsuit battle, the band announced on April 29, 2009 that the case had been settled.

The suit was resolved following a defence based on a contract case involving actress Olivia de Havilland decades before. Leto explained, "The California Appeals Court ruled that no service contract in California is valid after seven years, it became known as the De Havilland Law after she used it to get out of her contract with Warner Bros." Thirty Seconds to Mars decided to re-sign with EMI. Leto said the band had "resolved our differences with EMI" and the decision had been made because of "the willingness and enthusiasm by EMI to address our major concerns and issues, the opportunity to return to work with a team so committed and passionate about Thirty Seconds to Mars", he said it was "the most challenging business obstacle that we've gone through as a band."Upon completion of the record, Leto spoke of the troubles the band faced while working on This Is War. There were times. Everything, going on was brutal... It was a case of survival, to tell the truth."Leto produced a documentary Artifact, that chronicled the state of the modern music industry through their dispute with their record company.

Other musicians gave accounts of their industry experiences. The film premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival where it was well received and won the People's Choice Award for Best Documentary. During recording sessions, the band hosted a gathering in they called "The Summit" at the Avalon club in Los Angeles; the purpose of this was so that fans could see how far into recording the band was, maybe participate in the recording. In an interview, frontman Jared Leto said this: "The Summit was an experiment in our recording process, we were just trying to think of ways that we could deepen the connection between ourselves and our family of fans around the world. We do that and think of ways to break the boundary, and we thought,'How great would it be to invite the world to come and be a part of the next Thirty Seconds to Mars album? There were some things that were left-field sound experiments — using the group, the collective, as a musical instrument. We did everything from percussive expression to whispering to things that were a little bit more familiar, like inviting the 1,000 people that were there to sing the chorus of a song.

And those people who were a part of it all will be a part of the next Thirty Seconds to Mars album.... It was quite one of the best things we've done as a band." Further on in this interview, Jared revealed that album's style will be leaning more towards that of their self-titled debut than that of A Beautiful Lie, saying that, "The longest song on there is, eight minutes. The shortest five.... I don't think. I think we do a good job at just chasing the feeling, the core of the song, allowing the song the ability or right to go where it leads us, where it wants to go; the song dictates that, we've been working on this collection of songs for 12 months, so we know them pretty well." During May 2009, Kanye West posted a photo of himself, Brandon Flowers and Jared Leto together and announced that he and Jared were working together on a song named "Hurricane". This collaboration was only included on an early version of "Hurricane", West's work did not make it onto the album. Leto

On September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford in San Francisco. Moore fired two gunshots at President Ford. Moore was evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but agents decided that she posed no danger to the president, she was detained by police on an illegal handgun charge the day before the assassination attempt, but was released. The police confiscated 113 rounds of ammunition. President Gerald Ford was traveling to San Francisco to address a World Affairs Council. At 3:30 p.m. after speaking to the World Affairs Council, Ford emerged from the Post Street entrance of the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square walked towards his limousine. Before boarding the vehicle, he waved to the crowd that had gathered across the street. Sara Jane Moore, in the crowd, fired two shots aimed at Ford with her.38 Special revolver from a distance of 40 feet away. The first shot narrowly missed Ford's head by five inches. Upon hearing the gunfire, a bystander named Oliver Sipple dove towards Moore and grabbed her shooting arm.

That action redirected her second shot away from Ford when it fired, which instead struck John Ludwig in the groin. Ludwig survived his injuries. San Francisco Police Capt. Timothy Hettrich subdued Moore by grabbing her and wrestling the gun from her hand. Moore was swarmed and jumped on by other officers. In the meantime, the President’s Secret Service team pushed Ford into the limousine; the vehicle quickly sped off towards San Francisco International Airport, from where he flew back to Washington, D. C. Moore pleaded guilty to charges of attempted assassination on December 12, 1975; the following month on January 15, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. On December 31, 2007 at the age of 77, Moore was released on parole; as for Sipple, he was commended at the scene by the police for his actions. Three days after the assassination attempt in San Francisco, Sipple received a letter from President Ford praising him for his heroic actions. All of the media publicity about him was not without controversy however.

Upon realizing that Sipple was gay, the media began broadcasting this information. That became the first time that Sipple’s parents and family found out that Sipple was homosexual, as he had been hiding it from them. After learning about his sexual orientation, much of his family, including his parents and estranged from him. Sipple died of pneumonia in 1989. After President Ford was rushed to the SFO tarmac in his limousine, he boarded Air Force One, but before Ford could depart on his return trip to the nation’s capital, the plane had to wait for his wife Betty, the First Lady, carrying out her own schedule of events on the Peninsula. In addition to the San Francisco incident, Ford escaped unharmed from a previous assassination attempt on him in Sacramento, California 17 days earlier on September 5, 1975. In response to those two occurrences in the same month, President Ford wore a bulletproof trench coat in public beginning October 1975. Ford attempted to extend his presidency by running for election in 1976.

He lost to Jimmy Carter 297-240 in the electoral vote. He never ran for president again. In 2006, Ford died by natural causes. Gerald Ford assassination attempt in Sacramento List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots Oliver Sipple Sara Jane Moore