A Name You Should Know: Lincoln J. Beachy

Lincoln Beachy was known by many, including his competitors, as “The Man Who Owns the Sky”; “the Master Birdman”; “The Divine Flyer”; or quite simply “the Worlds Greatest Aviator”. Here’s a man whose aerial acrobatics drew the attendance of over 30 million people (17 million in 1914 alone) and yet we still had to look the guy up. This is a guy who built his own zeppelin and landed it on the White House lawn. A guy who decided to fill his tank and fly upwards until it ran out, to see how high he could get (nearly 12,000ft.) A guy who intentionally put himself in a desperate tailspin in order to show everybody how to properly get out of one. A guy who could do a break-neck vertical nose-dive and level out just in time to land on the runway. We could fill pages with more of his countless death defying feats, but we figure you’re already impressed. Not bad for a guy that crashed on his first two flights, eh?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_J._Beachey#/media/File:Lincoln_Beachey_cph.3a49742.jpg