Harriet Quimby Facts
Harriet Quimby Facts
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| Interesting Harriet Quimby Facts: |
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| Harriet Quimby was born in Arcadia, Michigan. |
| Her family moved to San Francisco in early 1900 to become a journalist. |
| She moved to New York in 1903 and became a theater critic for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. |
| During the next nine years she published over 250 articles in that magazine. |
| After attending the Belmont Park International Aviation Tournament in 1910 she became interested in aviation. |
| On August 1, 1911, she took her pilot's test and became the first woman in the US to earn a pilot's license. |
| Quimby was a screenwriter and seven of her screenplays were make into silent films directed by D.W.Griffith. |
| Her short film credits included "Sunshine through Dark," "The Blind Princess and the Poet," "His Mother's Scarf," "The Broken Cross," and "Fisher Folks." |
| She acted in her own production of her original work, "Lines of White on a Sullen Sea." |
| In 1912 she was recruited by the Vin Fiz Company to be the spokesperson for their new grape soda and her purple aviator uniform was their advertising logo. |
| On April 16, 1912, Quimby took off from Dover, England, and made the 59 minute flight to Calais, becoming the first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel. |
| Her accomplishment went largely unnoticed because the sinking of the Titanic on April 15 filled the newspapers of the day. |
| On July 1, 1912, while Quimby was piloting a new Bleriot monoplane in the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet, the plane suddenly pitched forward at 1500 feet. |
| She and her passenger, William Willard, organizer of the event, fell from the plane and died. |
| In 1991 a US airmail stamp was released which featured Quimby. |
| In 2012 she was inducted into the Long Island Air and Space Hall of Fame. |
| A film biography of her life called "Albatross" is currently in production. |
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