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| This is not the plane she built, but similar. |
When you think
of women firsts in aviation, Amelia Earhart comes to mind, as the first woman
to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928. But I’ll bet you did not know
that Bessica Raiche beat Earhart by 18 years. Bessica was not only the first woman
in the United States to fly solo, but she and her husband built the craft she
would fly in their living room. Which, by the way, presented a problem when
they realized they had not considered how they would get the silk, piano wire,
and bamboo contraption out of the
living room once it was built. They ended up dismantling it and reassembling
outside.
This feat is
not the only event that made Bessica one amazing woman. She was also the first
woman to drive a car across the United States. And that’s not all. She excelled
as a musician, artist and linguist—and, to the chagrin of both women and men of
her time, shot guns. If that wasn’t enough, Bessica became a dentist, and later
one of the first women to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology.
Mrs. Raiche had
to give up flying for health reasons, but pursed her other passions until she
died at the age of 57.