Twelve years later, he completed the first solo balloon flight across the Atlantic.
YACHTING Solo Round-the-World Trip Ends The French yachtsman Francis Joyon completed the first solo trip around the world in less than 80 days.
First to London, where a young pianist named Richard Toop completed the first solo rendition in a twenty-four-hour marathon in 1967.
Branson later helped fund Fossett's record-setting flight in 2005, in which he completed the first solo nonstop circumnavigation of the world in an airplane.
In 1933 the one-eyed aviation pioneer Wiley Post took off from Floyd Bennett in his single-engine Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae, and returned a week later to complete the first solo flight around the world.
In 2002, crammed for 14 days inside a capsule so small he couldn't stand up straight, Fossett completed the first solo, nonstop circuit of the globe by balloon.
In 1978 he and Austrian Peter Habeler were the first to climb Mount Everest (29,035 feet [8,850 metres]; see Researcher's Note: Height of Mount Everest), the highest mountain in the world, without the use of contained oxygen for breathing, and two years later he completed the first solo ascent of Everest, also without supplemental oxygen.
Charles had already completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic that would make him so famous when they met, and Anne was shy and -- through Benjamin's perspective -- not very pretty (certainly less pretty than her more gregarious older sister).
In the museum's display is Charles Lindbergh completing the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, bread lines in the Great Depression, Joe Louis toasting his victory as the world heavyweight boxing champion, and the explosion of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst, N.J.
In 2002 he became the first balloonist to circumnavigate the world alone, and in 2005 he completed the first nonstop solo global flight in an airplane.
