{"id":3151,"date":"2010-10-23T07:24:32","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T11:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/?p=3151"},"modified":"2011-10-12T15:27:05","modified_gmt":"2011-10-12T19:27:05","slug":"woman-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/?p=3151","title":{"rendered":"Woman in the Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Probably ever since we began paying attention to the birds, we human beings have longed to fly ourselves. And once the Wright Brothers proved this possible in 1903, it was not only men who were keen to give it a try.<\/p>\n

Blanche Stuart Scott (1885-1970), born in Rochester, New York, was known as a\u00a0\u201ctomboy.\u201d\u00a0Her father let her drive the family automobile around town, and although some of the neighbors objected to a fifteen-year-old behind the wheel, there was as yet no minimum driving age.<\/p>\n

In 1910 Scott became the first woman to drive across the country, from New York City to San Francisco, which brought her to the attention of Jerome Fanciulli, a promoter for Glenn Curtiss. Curtiss was a pioneer in the U.S. aviation industry, who designed aircraft and hired pilots to demonstrate his products. He wasn\u2019t crazy about the idea of training a female pilot, though he agreed to accept her as a pupil\u2014but he kept a block of wood behind her throttle pedal, so that although Scott learned to operate the plane and run it back and forth on the ground, it never took off.<\/p>\n

\"Airplane-ECS\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was probably fun for a while, but one day while Scott was practicing, the block of wood mysteriously became dislodged. Oops! Wonder how THAT happened! Scott zoomed off on an unscheduled flight, alarming her instructor but landing safely, and demonstrating that a woman could actually operate a plane not only on the ground, but also in the air. Eventually she joined Curtiss\u2019 Exhibition Team, and made her first Official Flight on October 23rd, 1910, of which today is the anniversary. (That first\u00a0\u201caccidental\u201d\u00a0flight didn\u2019t count.)<\/p>\n

Scott became known as \u201cTomboy of the Air,\u201d flying upside-down and executing heart-stopping dives, for a heart-stopping salary, too. In 1911 she made the first woman\u2019s long-distance flight\u2014sixty miles\u2014another \u201cunplanned\u201d event, when she decided one day just to keep flying. Scott went on to become the first female pilot to test prototypes,\u00a0but after a number of male colleagues lost their lives in terrible accidents, and sensing that her spectators anticipated her own eventual crash, she retired from flying and spent several decades in broadcasting instead.\u00a0Her flying days weren\u2019t over, however\u2014in 1948 she became the first American woman to fly in a jet, piloted by none other than Chuck Yeager.<\/p>\n

From a travel sketchbook I post a page that seemed appropriate for today\u2019s anniversary: airplane\/daring daughter.<\/p>\n

\"CakeChrysanth\"<\/a>Jan<\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Probably ever since we began paying attention to the birds, we human beings have longed to fly ourselves. And once the Wright Brothers proved this possible in 1903, it was not only men who were keen to give it a try. Blanche Stuart Scott (1885-1970), born in Rochester, New York, was known as a\u00a0\u201ctomboy.\u201d\u00a0Her fatherRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[48,23,127,66,17,3],"class_list":["post-3151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sketchbook","tag-ecs","tag-festival","tag-flight","tag-history","tag-penink","tag-watercolor"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3151"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3169,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151\/revisions\/3169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}