Good News In History, October 6

Good News In History, October 6
Good News In History, October 6 113 years ago today, Beatrix de Rijk became the first female licensed Dutch aircraft pilot. This pioneering aviator was born in Surabaya, modern-day Indonesia in the Dutch East Indies, to a Javan mother and a Dutch father. In the Netherlands, she was the first Dutch woman to drive a German automobile, but she found the car was too slow for her, so she bought an NSU motorbike instead, forfeited her inheritance, and left for Paris. READ how she got her wings…  (1911) Beatrix de Rijk — pub domain Near Reims, she took flying lessons at the Hanriot school, paying 2,000 francs to the brothers RenΓ© and Marcel Hanriot who built their own airplanes. She later described the Hanriot machine she flew in as no more than “some slats with a lot of tension wires, some aeroplane dust and a weak little engine,” with a “threatening fuel tank” above her head. She passed her first 100-meter altitude flying exam on September 8th, and on October 6th she received Pilot Licence No. …