On the foggy morning of July 17,1938, a 31-year-old pilot named Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field on a solo, nonstop trip to California. Twenty-eight hours later, he landed in Ireland... with a whole lot of explaining to do. He had no passport or papers of any kind, nor had he received permission from U.S officials to make the transatlantic flight.
Safely on the ground, Corrigan offered this explanation to Irish customs: Heavy fog in New York had forced him to navigate using only his compass. The fog continued all of that day and into the night; there was never any good visibility. When the sun rose the next morning, 26 hours into his flight, he was surprised to find himself over an ocean. …
