June 21, 1913, is celebrated as the historic date when an American daredevil named Georgia Tiny Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane. While a few historical sources suggest she may have experimented with unrecorded airplane jumps the year prior, this summer leap permanently sealed her legacy.
Standing just over four feet tall and weighing a mere 85 pounds, Tiny was already a veteran of dangerous hot air balloon jumps before transitioning to motorized flight. For this groundbreaking stunt, she was suspended on a tiny trap seat completely outside the cockpit of a biplane flown by aviation pioneer Glenn Martin. Her daring exhibitions were so flawless that the U.S. Army quickly hired her to demonstrate parachute reliability, directly leading to the military making emergency parachutes mandatory for all wartime pilots.
Image: Georgia Tiny Broadwick preparing to make another parachute jump in August 1913 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
