Douglas Corrigan

Douglas Corrigan became internationally famous when in 1938 he set out for a flight in his second-hand plane from New York to California and instead wound up in Ireland, earning himself the nickname he would carry for the rest of his life: "Wrong Way" Corrigan. Flying in a 1929 Curtiss Robin monoplane, on July 17, 1938 he loaded 320 gallons of gasoline (enough for 40 hours) into the tiny, single-engine plane. He had announced he was heading west to Long Beach, but when he took off from Floyd Bennett Field, the plane's nose was heading east. He was previously denied permission to fly the Atlantic by the Department of Commerce because of the condition of his plane. Nearly 29 hours later he landed in Baldonnel near Dublin. He returned to the US a hero and the ticker-tape parade for him in New York was larger than Charles A. Lindbergh's. He even starred in a movie about his flight (The Flying Irishman (1939). A shy, private man, Corrigan became a test pilot for Douglass Aircraft during World War II. He later grew oranges in Santa Monica, CA, where he had lived since 1951.