Betty Skelton, ‘fastest woman on Earth,’ dies at 85
http://dervishcom.blogspot.com/2011/09/betty-skelton-fastest-woman-on-earth.html
Betty Skelton, a daredevil pilot who was a three-time national aerobatics champion and became known as the "fastest woman on Earth" when she set speed records in airplanes and automobiles, died Aug. 31 at her home in The Villages, Fla. She was 85.
She had cancer, said Dorothy S. Cochrane, a friend and the curator of general aviation at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
Ms. Skelton, who made her first solo flight — illegally — at age 12, went on to become a pioneering and charismatic pilot in the days of propellers and open cockpits. She gave her first aerobatics performance when she was 19, appearing in the same show in Jacksonville, Fla., in which the Navy's precision flight team, the Blue Angels, made its debut in 1946.
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Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=05bee9816e218bb8ebc3a046fa5ecd30
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