This is CBS I on the World. I'm John Batchel with David Rooney. His new book is The Big Hop.

This is the story of the first flight across the North Atlantic. From Newfoundland to Ireland is the thinking, because that's the shortest connecting route.

And they want to do this in a fashion to win 10,000 pounds, which in 1919 is a lot of money,

a great deal of money, more than one person could spend in a lifetime.

The man who will write the check is named Lord Northcliffe.

Actually, his name is Hormsworth. And he's a self-made, multiple, multiple millionaire.

Today, he'd be a billionaire. He puts up the prize again, and these men gather to take up the

charge. They're the magnificent young men and their flying machines.

We've met Alcock and Brown.

Now, my favorite, man by the name of Hawker, who's going to fly with Greene.

What do we need to know about Hawker, David?

Harry Hawker was Australian.

He grew up in the outskirts of Melbourne.

Like Jack Alcock, he became obsessed with motoring, motor cars, motorbikes, and ran over.

He had a nice little life as a teenager.

And he had an epiphany in 1910 when he saw Australia's first ever aeroplane flights made

perhaps quite remarkably by the famous escapologist

Harry Houdini over dry grassland, diggers res, near Melbourne.

When I've read that in your book, David, I thought, surely this isn't the Houdini,

and it is. It is the, who knew he had this sidebar of barnstorming?

Did you know that beforehand, David?

I didn't.

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