Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is best known for The Little Prince, a novella about a pilot stranded in the desert and a boy from a distant asteroid. Born in Lyon in 1900, he flew airmail routes across Europe, Africa and South America, and wrote about that work in Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars. He flew reconnaissance missions for France during the Second World War and disappeared on one such flight in July 1944.