In May of 1911, a young pilot from Long Island’s Moisant Avenue Aviation School was practicing flying. When a gust of wind blew back the person’s veil, onlookers realized that the pilot was not a man! It was journalist Harriet Quimby. How did this plucky reporter acquit herself so successfully in such a dangerous new field?
Flying was risky for anyone at that time. Just eight years earlier, the success of the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, generated new goals for adventurers. Pioneering pilots deemed flying as the greatest challenge of the day. Determined not to let her gender hold her back, Harriet Quimby started to take flying lessons.
Quimby earned her pilot’s license on August 1, 1911, making her the world’s second woman—and the first American
woman—to do so. Dressed in a flight suit of purple satin, she gave flying demonstrations around the United States and Mexico.
Quimby was the first pilot ever to cross the English Channel. Nowadays, it may be easy to discredit this accomplishment since some people actually swim the 32 miles of water that separates England from France. Yet, in Quimby’s time, people had little knowledge of flying or of predicting weather. She was lucky to get through the clouds that day to land safely, though way off course. Imagine the shock French fishermen must have felt when they scanned the horizon to see a flying machine headed for their beach!
Less than a year after Harriet Quimby became a pilot, she suffered mortal injuries when she and a passenger were suddenly thrown from their seats, falling nearly a mile to their deaths in the waters near Boston. The world lost a legendary pioneer.