Airplanes

No. 249: Amy Johnson
Amy Johnson, a pilot and a ground engineer, is the first woman to fly from England to Australia.

No. 1209: Writing about Flight
There's a curious trend among early pilots-besides flying, many had a passion for writing. Pioneer fliers such as Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham and Charles Lindbergh used their experiences of soaring above the clouds to influence the creations of their pens.

No. 1503: New Women Fliers
Early women fliers were truly daredevils, eager to break free from the tightly corseted Victorian age and "skim over the rooftops or land in the streets".

No. 289: Early Women Fliers
The male owner of a flying school blocks the throttle of a female student's plane, but she still manages to get 40 feet into the air, becoming the first woman to pilot a plane.

No. 1002: WW-II Soviet Women Pilots
Every year, elderly women in sensible shoes meet in Moscow to swap WWII memories. They are the remaining members of the first women's combat unit.

No. 1057: Amelia Earhart
Few know that Amelia Earhart wanted to be a poet. Before she could write her book of poetry, however, she vanished at sea, leaving behind the mystery of her disappearance and the mystery of what she might have written.

No. 988: Bessie Coleman
The first African-American woman to pilot a plane had to sail all the way to France to do it.

No. 1251: Katherine Stinson
Katherine Stinson sold her piano, got a pilot's license and told a little white lie about her age. Out of this redirected music career grew the livelihood of the rest of her family.

No. 1253: Hanna Reitsch
Reitsch's dedication to Hitler extended to offering to test the prototype of a human-guided kamikaze rocket bomb, yet it remains unknown whether she disbelieved Allied "propaganda" or chose to ignore it.

No. 490: Balloon over the Apennines
A contessa and her pilot husband opt for a most unusual honeymoon: a hot-air balloon trip that ends in a cornfield.

Hot-Air Balloons

No. 234: A Lady in a Parachute
Eighty years before women rocketed away from this earth in space shuttles, a 16-year-old girl volunteers to risk her life in front of a man with a gun. That moment is one of many that allow today's women to take just as primitive, and just as revolutionary, risks.

Women in Flight: Balloons, Parachutes, Airplanes, and the Search for Equity
This talk about female pioneers and adventurers in flight was given by John H. Lienhard at The Breakfast Club, River Oaks Country Club, Main Ballroom, 7:30 AM, Wednesday, January 20, 1999.