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Marie Marvingt (20 February 1875 – 14 December 1963)[1] was a French athlete, mountaineer, aviator and journalist. She won numerous prizes for her sporting achievements including those of swimming, cycling, mountain climbing, winter sports, ballooning, flying, riding, gymnastics, athletics, rifle shooting and fencing. She was the first woman to climb many of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. She was a record-breaking balloonist, an aviator and during World War I became the first woman to fly missions during conflict as a pilot. She was also a qualified surgical nurse, was the first trained and certified Flight Nurse in the world, and worked for the establishment of air ambulance services throughout the world. According to a French source, it was M. de Château-Thierry de Beaumanoir who, in 1903, named Marie Marvingt as "La fiancée du danger."
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Marie Marvingt ascended as a passenger in a free-flight balloon for the first time in 1901. Then, on 19 July 1907, she piloted one. In September 1909, she made her first solo flight as a balloon pilot. On 26 October 1909 Marvingt became the first woman to pilot a balloon across the North Sea and English Channel from Europe to England.
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she studied fixed-wing aviation with Hubert Latham, in an Antoinette aeroplane. She piloted and flew solo in this monoplane, the first woman to do so – she was the second to be licensed in a monoplane, the first being Marthe Niel.
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Marie Marvingt received a pilot's licence from the Aéro-Club de France on 8 November 1910 Licensed No. 281, she was the third Frenchwoman to be registered after Raymonde de Laroche (No. 36) and Marthe Niel (No. 226). She was the only woman ever licensed in the difficult-to-fly Antoinette monoplane. In her first 900 flights she never "broke wood" in a crash, a record unequaled at that time.
During World War I she disguised herself as a man and, with the connivance of a French infantry lieutenant, served on the front lines. She was discovered and sent home but later participated in military operations with the Italian 3rd Regiment of Alpine Troops in the Italian Dolomites at the direct request of Marshal Foch. She also served as a Red Cross nurse.
In 1915 Marvingt became the first woman in the world to fly combat missions when she became a volunteer pilot flying bombing missions over German-held territory and she received the Military Cross for her aerial bombing of a German military base in Metz.
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Between the two World Wars she worked as a journalist, war correspondent, and medical officer with French Forces in North Africa. While in Morocco she invented metal skis and suggested their use on aeroplanes landing on sand.
On 20 February 1955, her eightieth birthday, Marvingt was flown over Nancy by a U.S. Air Force officer from Toul-Rosières Air Base in an American fighter jet. In the same year she also studied piloting helicopters, though she never earned her helicopter pilot's licence. In 1961, at the age of 86, she cycled from Nancy to Paris.
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WOW that is a well lived life and full of adventure!!
A BIG SALUTE to Marie Marvingt she was truly tougher than the rest!
Tank you Outlaw-War for telling me about this extraordinaire woman.
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