1900–1944 · French aviator, airmail pioneer & writer
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry flew mail routes over the Sahara and the Andes before turning the experience into literature — Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars, and finally The Little Prince, which he wrote and illustrated during a wartime exile in New York and on Long Island in 1942. He was a working pilot to the end: in July 1944 he took off from Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and never came back, and France later designated him “Mort pour la France.” He never saw the book become one of the most translated works ever published.