Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in Lyon, France in 1900. He had wanted to be a pilot since he was a child. After joining the French military in 1921 and being transferred to the French Air Force, he was able to earn his pilot's wings.

He left the air force but his passion for flying never stopped. Saint-Exupery became the director of an airfield in the western Sahara due to his love for the desert and the people who lived there. From there he flew throughout the region rescuing pilots whose aircraft had gone down in the harsh region.

In 1935, his aircraft crashed in the Sahara. After four days, he and his navigator were nearly dead, until a desert tribesman rescued them. This experience inspired him to write "Wind, Sand and Stars".

When World War II began in 1939, Saint-Exupery fled to the United States, spending a couple of years there and in Canada. It was during this time that he wrote The Little Prince, which was published there in 1943.

On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupery left for a reconnaissance mission over France, but he never returned. In 2000, a scuba driver found his plane near Marseille. The cause of his death remains a mystery.

You can read Antoine Saint-Exupery's full biography here.