Creator
Ambassador Hotel
Title
"Wrong Way" Corrigan Honoree Banquet
Coverage
Los Angeles
Date
September 12, 1938
Description
Douglass Corrigan took off from Brooklyn in a jerry-built plane on a foggy morning in July 1938 and landed in Dublin twenty-eight hours later. Having been repeatedly denied permission to fly across the Atlantic, the likeable 31-year-old aircraft mechanic told the Irish authorities he had planned to fly to California but somehow “got mixed up in the clouds and must have flown the wrong way.” The press hailed him as “Wrong Way” Corrigan, capturing the imagination of a Depression-weary public. When America’s newest aviation hero was honored in Los Angeles in September of that year, the menu was printed backwards to underscore what had become a national running joke.