Quick Facts<\/h4>
| Nationality<\/td> | American \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8<\/td><\/tr> |
| Achievement<\/td> | First American woman to earn a pilot's licence; first woman to fly the English Channel<\/td><\/tr> |
| Licensed<\/td> | 2 August 1911, Aero Club of America<\/td><\/tr> |
| Channel Crossing<\/td> | 16 April 1912 \u2014 England to France, Bl\u00e9riot XI<\/td><\/tr> |
| Born \/ Died<\/td> | 11 May 1875 \u2013 1 July 1912 (age 37)<\/td><\/tr> |
| Career<\/td> | Drama critic, journalist, screenwriter, aviation pioneer<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n![\"Harriet](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/1\/19\/Harriet_Quimby_1911.jpg\") She had been a drama critic and journalist before she was a pilot. Quimby discovered aviation in 1910 at the Belmont Park air meet on Long Island, where she watched the great pilots of the era and immediately decided she would become one of them. She took lessons at the Moisant Aviation School, passing her flight test at 4:30 AM on a foggy morning \u2014 the examiners preferred early hours to avoid wind. She passed on her second attempt \u2014 her first try, the day before, had ended in failure. On 2 August 1911, she became the first woman in America to earn a pilot's licence.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Her Channel crossing was meant to be a sensation. She had kept it secret from the press, travelling to England under a false name to avoid competition. But the day she lifted off from Folkestone, the newspapers were full of something else: the RMS Titanic had sunk four days earlier. Her historic crossing \u2014 in fog, using only a compass and a watch, with no landmarks visible for most of the 22-mile flight \u2014 was buried on inside pages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n A Life Cut Impossibly Short<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nShe landed on a beach near Hardelot, France, 59 minutes after taking off. She had done it \u2014 the first woman to fly the Channel. She expected a hero's welcome. What she got was a shrug from a world still in shock over the Titanic. It was an injustice history has slowly been correcting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Two months later, on 1 July 1912, Quimby was flying in the Harvard-Boston Air Meet. During a return flight from Boston Light in a new Bl\u00e9riot monoplane, the aircraft inexplicably pitched forward. Both Quimby and her passenger \u2014 an event organiser named William Willard \u2014 were thrown from the aircraft. They had no seat belts. Neither survived the fall into the shallow waters of Dorchester Bay. Quimby was 37 years old.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n \n \n\u201cThe men flyers have given out the impression that aeroplaning is very perilous work, something that an ordinary mortal should not dream of attempting. But when I saw how easily the man flyers manipulated their machines I said I could fly.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Harriet Quimby, 1911<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Quimby flew for barely 14 months between earning her licence and dying in Dorchester Bay. In that time she flew across the English Channel in fog, wrote dozens of articles about aviation for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, and inspired a generation of women who would follow her into the sky. She appeared on a US postage stamp in 1991. Her famous plum flying suit was lost \u2014 stolen after her death, before her mother could donate it to the Smithsonian. And every woman who has flown a commercial aircraft since owes something to the drama critic from Michigan who decided, in 1910, that the sky was no place to be excluded from.<\/p>\r\n\n\n\n\n |