Today in Technology History
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May 18
Three days ago, we told the story of the first airline stewardesses. Today we focus again on flying women, with the story of the perhaps greatest woman aviator. No, not Amelia Earhart -- although she will be the topic of next Monday's history message. Instead, today we tell the story of Jacqueline Cochran.
"Jackie" Cochran was an orphan raised by a poor family. She worked her way out of poverty, eventually starting her own business. But Cochran's true calling was flying; she took flying lessons in 1932 and received her pilot's license in just 18 days.
She immediately began racing competitively, although she sometimes had to fight for permission to participate. Not only was she the first woman to compete in the famous Bendix Trophy Transcontinental Race across the U.S. (in 1934), but she was the first woman to win it (in 1938).
During World War II, she created and led the U.S. military's "Women's Airforce Service Pilots" (WASP) program, which sent women pilots to Europe to fly planes behind the front lines, where they logged over 75 million miles.
After the war, Cochran set an astonishing number of records, too many to list here, flying in dozens of types of planes. She was the first woman to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier, and the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic. On this date (May 18, 1953) she became the first woman to break the sound barrier.
Cochran kept flying until the 1970s. When she died in 1980, she held more aviation records than any other pilot, man or woman.
Related links:
Click here to read about Cochran in Encyclopedia Britannica.
Click here to read many more of Cochran's records.
Click here to read another biography of Cochran.
Click here to read Cochran's summary of the WASP program.
Click here and here to learn more about women in aviation history.
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