Around the World In Seven Days - Wiley Post's Globe Trotting Adventure
Around the World In Seven Days - Wiley Post's Globe-Trotting Adventure
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
Dear Henry,
Do you know who the first person to fly around the world was?
If you guessed Charles Lindbergh, you’re in good company. I did too. Lindbergh looms so large in the story of early aviation that it’s easy to assume every milestone somehow belongs to him.
But this one doesn’t.
The first aviator to circle the globe solo was Wiley Post. He completed the journey in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes, landing back in New York on July 22, 1933. (Quite a bit less than 80)
Like Lindbergh, Wiley Post was a larger-than-life character, though perhaps in a messier, more American way. Born in 1898 to cotton-farming parents, Post came of age at a time when aviation was still more daredevilry than profession. He attempted to enter flight training during World War I, only for the war to end before he completed it.
What followed was not a straight path upward. Post drifted through roughneck oil work and even bank robbery, for which he served time in the Oklahoma State Prison system. It was an industrial accident on an oil rig that changed the trajectory of his life entirely. He lost his left eye and used the settlement money to buy an airplane.
That unlikely pivot worked.
Post’s talent eventually earned him a position as personal pilot to Oklahoma oilmen Powell Briscoe and F.C. Hall. They funded the purchase of the aircraft that would become famous worldwide: the Winnie Mae, a single-engine Lockheed Vega that carried Post around the globe.
Beyond that headline achievement, Wiley Post contributed substantially to the future of aviation. He was a pioneer of high-altitude flight and played a key role in developing early pressurized flight suits, innovations that made modern commercial aviation possible.
His career was cut tragically short in 1935, when he died alongside humorist Will Rogers in a plane crash during an experimental flight over the Arctic en route to Russia.
When I first encountered Wiley Post’s name, I wondered if he might also be the inspiration for Wile E. Coyote. The name seems too perfect not to be borrowed. But no, it turns out the cartoon character draws inspiration instead from the coyote described by Mark Twain in Roughing It.
Still, the comparison feels fitting.
Wiley Post was one of those restless figures who tested the limits of technology, geography, and common sense — and somehow circled the world in the process.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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