Harriet Quimby

Harriet Quimby (* May 11, 1875 in Coldwater, Michigan, † July 1, 1912 in Boston) is considered the first major U.S. pilot. As the first woman she crossed on April 16, 1912 solo flight the English Channel.

Life

Harriet Quimby was born into a farming family in Michigan; her childhood and schooling was poorly documented. Since 1897, she lived in San Francisco to become an actress, but then worked as a journalist. At 27, she moved to New York City to continue her career in journalism, and there wrote regularly for the magazine Leslie's. Also known as photographic and travel reporter she was successful; she traveled to Cuba, Europe, Egypt and Mexico.

In 1906 she discovered in a report on the Vanderbilt Racetrack their passion for fast cars and earned himself his own car. By his mid-thirties, she was an independent, successful woman who traveled the world and was able to support their parents materially.

Your interest in flying was formed in October 1910 when Harriet Quimby flight competition at Belmont Park visited, where she met John Moisant, a popular aviator and flight instructor, who was famous for his victory in the Betting flight around the Statue of Liberty. His sister Matilda and Harriet Quimby began with John Moisant and his brother Alfred and Matilde Moisant to take flying lessons ( The Wright brothers took at that time no female student pilot on ). Although John Moisant shortly thereafter in a crash was killed, the two women continue teaching.

Quimby worked at this time still as a journalist and wrote in 1911, seven screenplays for silent films of DW Griffith were produced.

On August 1, 1911 Quimby became the first woman in the U.S. their ticket. There followed a series of " first " flights, the first night flight a pilot, and together with Matilde Moisant the first flight of female pilots on Mexico. Quimby reported in Leslie's on their flying adventures and designed future scenarios of large passenger aircraft and setting up regular airlines.

Quimbies next big goal was to cross the English Channel from England to France, which Louis Blériot had done first time in 1909 in the reverse direction. Louis Blériot, who lent her one of his 50 -hp Bleriot XI monoplane, was one of the few people who learned of their plans so that no one in Europe could forestall her. In March 1912, she traveled to England, where Blériot sent her the plane. She behaved quietly, waiting for good weather. On 2 April, the British airmen Gustav Hamel thwarted their plans to be the " first woman on the channel" when he took his country wife Eleanor Trehawke Davie during a flight over the English Channel - "only " as a passenger. The sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, a disaster that attracted worldwide attention occurred. Quimby started two days later of Dover, on 16 April, with cloudy sky at 5:30 clock in the morning, and landed 59 minutes later on a beach about 40 kilometers from Calais. Although she was received enthusiastically by the inhabitants there, she learned very little press fame due to the events surrounding the Titanic.

Upon her return to New York was planning Quimby more show and competition flights, the next - the third Boston Aviation Meet - was scheduled for July 1, 1912 in Squantum / Massachusetts. She was accompanied by the organizer William Willard; the two started in a new 70 -hp Bleriot Eindeckermaschine. After a normal sightseeing flight, the aircraft was inclined at an altitude of just 450 meters from until now unknown reasons suddenly forward and threw the occupants who were not wearing seat belts out. They rushed in front of 5,000 spectators at the Dorchester Bay to death.

On July 4, 1912 Harriet Quimby was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery; her remains were a year later transferred to the Kenisco Cemetery in Valhalla / New York.