Harriet Quimby

Harriet Quimby must be one of my favourite aviatrixes. Quimby was a journalist - very uncommon for those times. Not only did she manage to get a job - she somehow managed to convince her employer to pay for her flying lessons and write a series of articles about her experience.

In 1911 she became the first woman to receive her pilots licence in the USA and the second in the world, after De Laroche.

Less that 12 months later she became the first woman to make a solo flight across the English Channel in a Bleriot aircraft.

Not only did she strike a sensation being a female aviator in a the time of corsets and wearing trousers were scandalous - she caused a sensation by designing and wearing a purple satin flying suit! You can’t imagine home much I wished photograph was in colour those days!