Women’s History Month

Airports celebrate Women’s History Month

Aviation history, , ,
Courtesy Museum of Flight

March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is International Women’s Day. Both present a great opportunity to celebrate and learn more about the accomplishments of women.

Here are a few tweets we spotted from airports and museums. Our favorite places.

Nellie Bly landing soon at Pittsburgh Int’l Airport

Aviation history, History, , ,
Nellie Bly – Courtesy Library of Congress

We take a short break from coronavirus coverage and anxiety today to give a cheer for Pittsburgh International Airport, which is celebrating Women’s History Month by putting a statue of legendary traveler and early investigative journalist Nellie Bly in the terminal.

Bly, the pen name for Elizabeth Seaman Cochran, grew up in Western Pennsylvania and in 1885 went to work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch, which is now the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She moved to New York City in 1887 to work for the New York World and wrote a groundbreaking expose of the terrible conditions at a mental institution by posing as a patient.

In 1889 she set off for a trip about the world, determined to break the fictional record of Phileas Fogg, whose journey was described by Jules Verne in his 1873 novel, “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

Bly left Hoboken, New Jersey by ship and completed the trip in 72 days, 6 hours 11 minutes and 14 seconds, traveling by horse, rickshaw, sampan, burro and other vehicles along the way.

Courtesy University of Iowa Libraries

“Round the World” board game. Courtesy University of Iowa Libraries.

Her 1890 book chronicling the adventure is “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.”

Pittsburgh International Airport already has two statues in the terminal: George Washington and Franco Harris, a legendary Pittsburgh Steelers player.

Those statues are stationed in the PIT terminal as promotions for the city’s Heinz History Center and are popular spots for selfies.

At the end of March, to mark Women’s History Month and the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, the Heinz History Center will add Nellie Bly’s statue to the PIT terminal.

Courtesy PIT Airport. Photo by Beth Hollerich

Souvenir Sunday at the Future of Flight Aviation Center

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cake for Boeing

It’s Women’s History Month and on Saturday, March 15, 2014, the Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour hosted an event honoring some of the women who have worked at Boeing over the years as pilots, engineers, line workers and leaders.

The day was also a celebration of the publication of a new book: Trailblazers: The Women of The Boeing Company and included a gathering of many of the women featured in the book who represent company ‘firsts.’

I’ll circle back here in a few days with some more information about some of the women featured in the book, but because this is Souvenir Sunday I wanted to share a link to the book and a snap of one of the souvenirs being sold in the Boeing store to go along with the book.

Trailblazers book

trailblazers

Packards at John Wayne Airport & a salute to women in aviation at the C.R. Smith Museum

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From now through June 1, 2010, a collection of photographs and accessories from the classic Packard automobile will be on display in Terminal A at John Wayne Airport (JWA).   The items are on loan from Orange County’s Packard International Motor Car Club and include hood ornaments, Packard ephemera, and photos of Packards, including this 1932 Twin Six Packard Phaeton owned by actress Jean Harlow

And this month, in recognition of Women’s History Month, the American Airlines C.R. Smith Museum near DFW International Airport, is hosting a photo exhibit honoring the contributions of women who have worked for American Airlines and, on Saturdays, showing a series of movies featuring women in aviation.