Who was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from east to west?

The photograph shows the Percival Vega Gull, a 1930s British, four-seater touring aircraft. It was a single-engine low-wing, wood-and-fabric monoplane with a fixed tailwheel undercarriage. An aircraft of this type, registered VP-KCC and named "Messenger," was used to make the first non-stop east-to-west transatlantic flight on 4-5 September 1936. The flight was also the first non-stop solo Atlantic crossing by a woman. She was Beryl Markham.

Beryl Markham (1902-1986) was born in Rutland, England, the daughter of a horse trainer. She had an eventful personal life. As a child she moved with her father to Kenya. In her twenties she learned to fly and worked as a bush pilot. She married three times, taking the name Markham from her second husband with whom she had a son, Gervase. In 1928, while pregnant with Gervase, she had an affair with Harry, the son of King George V, who became besotted with her during his trip to Kenya. On returning to England, Harry installed Beryl as his mistress in the Grosvenor House Hotel, a few minutes' walk from Buckingham Palace.

She decided to take on the Atlantic crossing, taking off from Abingdon, England. After a 20-hour flight, her aircraft, "The Messenger," suffered fuel starvation due to icing of the fuel tank vents, and she crash-landed at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer and chronicled her adventures in her 1942 memoir, “West with the Night.”