The Wright Flyer EX Vin Fiz, displayed in the Main Hall at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Orville and Wilbur Wright had first achieved sustained, powered, heavier-than-air manned flight in 1903. But development of the aircraft was slow.

In 1911, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst offered a $50,000 prize ($1.5 million in 2012 dollars) to the first person to fly coast to coast in less than 30 days.

Calbraith Perry Rodgers purchased a specially-built Wright airplane in August 1911. He became the first person to purchase an aircraft. The Wrights called their plane the Model EX. The plane had a 35 horsepower engine allowed a speed of 50 miles per hour.

Since the plane would be stopping constantly, refueling, and needing repairs, Rodgers persuaded meatpacking multi-millionaire J. Ogden Armour to sponsor the attempt. Ogden's company had just released a new grape soda, Vin Fiz. Ogden asked that the plane bear the soft drink's name.

Rodgers had a support team which followed his flight in a special train with three railcards. Among the people aboard the train were Charlie Taylor (the Wright brothers' mechanic), Mabel Rodgers (his wife); his mother, Maria Holmes Chambers Rodgers; several newspaper reporters; and some of Armour's employees.

The flight began on September 17, 1911, at Sheepshead Bay, New York. Progress was slow, in part due to the need to constantly repair the aircraft and replace worn parts, and because Rodgers crashed several times. Only a few pieces of the plane actually made the entire trip!

Rodgers landed in Pasadena, California on November 5 -- missing the prize deadline by a whopping 19 days. Nonetheless, a crowd of 20,000 was there to see him land. He rested for seven days, then flew to Long Beach. Once more he crashed (this time at Compton) and suffered a concussion and a spinal injury. Hospitalized for three weeks, he didn't make it to Long Beach until December 10. He actually flew his airplane into the Pacific Ocean.

Rodgers had carried a bag of U.S. Mail with him. This was the first transcontinental delivery of mail by plane in U.S. history. (Formal U.S. airmail operations began in August 1918.)

The Hearst Prize expired in November 1911 with no winner.

Although other fliers made transcontinental flights, they suffered the same problems as Rodgers. It wasn't until August 13, 1930, that Frank Hawks piloted the "Texaco 13" cross-country in 12 hours that a true transcontinental flight occurred.

On April 3, 1912, while demonstrating the an airplane over Long Beach, Rodgers flew into a flock of birds. His plane crashed into the ocean, and his neck was broken. He died almost instantaneously -- just a few hundred feet from where the Vin Fiz ended its transcontinental flight.