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7th May 2021 11:49 am 7th May 2021 11:49 am
One of the most inspirational women of the 20
th century, aviator Amy Johnson was the first female pilot to fly solo from the UK to Australia, as well as the first to gain a ground engineer’s ‘C’ licence. Her mysterious disappearance ensures she will never be forgotten. Written by Nick Smith
Birthplace of air traffic control and of the ‘mayday’ signal, Croydon Airport – Britain’s only international aerodrome of the interwar years – was the point of departure for what was to become one of the most famous flights of the 20
th century.
British pioneer aviator Amy Johnson (1903-1941) was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia. Image: Alamy Stock Photo
Irish pilot Lady Mary Heath was at the height of her fame and one of the best-known women in the world in the 1920s when, just before the National Air Races in Cleveland in 1929, she crashed her light plane into a factory roof and was seriously injured.
Lady Heath was taken to Lakeside Hospital, where she remained in a coma with life-threatening injuries for several weeks, tended to by a young nurse named Ruth M. Stewart.
Lady Heath survived. When she finished her convalescence at the hospital she gave Ms. Stewart a signed photograph of herself and the hand-drawn map of the airport that had been in her pocket when she crashed.
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Amelia Earhart, immortalized in wax at Madame Tussauds, New York ,
Photo Credit: Anton Ivanov / Shutterstock.com
Home > See > Story > First Woman to Fly Solo: Amelia Earhart
It was this day 86 years ago when aviatrix Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the United States 02 Min Read
Despite everything the world is going through right now, if a year you have great expectations from starts off with a premier air carrier appointing an all-woman crew to fly its longest nonstop flight, hope wells up. Two days later, today, January 11, marks the day aviatrix extraordinare Amelia Earhart famously flew solo from Hawaii to California, in the process registering her name in history books as the first person to do so.