Commemorative postal cover marking the 50th anniversary of aviator Charles Lindbergh's flight tests of an experimental glider in Lebec.

Postmarked Feb. 3, 1980, at Lebec, CA 93243. Postage stamp (13c) commemorates Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Front reads: Lindbergh Flys [sic] the Albatross / Three years after flying alone across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh glided above So. California in a plane which flew by no other engine but the wind.

Back stamped: TOP-i-CO / Limited Edition / No. 68 of 75 Covers Serviced.

The famous aviator Col. Charles A. Lindbergh conducted "gliding experiments" in Lebec the first week of February 1930 with W. Hawley Bowlus, who was considered America's foremost gliding pilot according to Popular Science Monthly, which did a 3-page photo spread in its May 1930 edition as seen here.

Together they established a mountain camp to learn the "new sport of motorless flying."

These were halcyon times for the most famous man in the world — three years after his triumphant solo flight across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, and two years before the kidnapping and murder of his 20-month-old son, Charles Jr., by Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

There are unproved rumors that in the aftermath of the kidnapping, Lindbergh would sometimes hide from the paparazzi at the Newhall home of a friend, William S. Hart.