26 Facts About Jeannette Piccard

Jeannette Ridlon Piccard was an American high-altitude balloonist, and in later life an Episcopal priest.

Jeannette Piccard held the women's altitude record for nearly three decades, and according to several contemporaneous accounts was regarded as the first woman in space.

Jeannette Piccard was the first of the women to be ordained that day, because at 79 she was the oldest, and because she was fulfilling an ambition she had had since she was 11 years old.

Jeannette Piccard had the image of the street-wise old lady.

Jeannette Piccard had a lifelong interest in science and religion.

That same year she met and married Jean Felix Jeannette Piccard, who was teaching at the university.

Jeannette Piccard loved his boys, and he thought boys would be boys, I guess.

In 1926 they returned to the United States, where Jean Jeannette Piccard taught organic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The couple lived in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania before settling in Minneapolis in 1936 when Jean Jeannette Piccard joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota.

Jeannette Piccard received a doctorate in education from the University of Minnesota in 1942, and a certificate of study from the General Theological Seminary in 1973.

Jeannette Piccard was always in the room when he was lecturing or otherwise, almost always.

Jeannette Piccard studied at Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan, under Edward J Hill, a balloonist and Gordon Bennett Cup winner, who agreed to serve as flight director for the Piccards' planned stratospheric flight.

Jeannette Piccard raised a good deal of money by selling their story in press releases to the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Jeannette Piccard piloted the reconditioned Century of Progress, and the couple took along their pet turtle, Fleur de Lys.

Jeannette Piccard had to choose a landing on elm trees, realizing that meant the Century of Progress would never fly again.

Jean and Jeannette Piccard felt they had succeeded by reaching the stratosphere, and they became popular lecturers.

In December 1934, Jeannette Piccard wrote to Swann to ask if Jean might become a member of the chemistry staff of the Bartol Research Foundation at the Franklin Institute, and offered her services, but was turned down.

Jeannette Piccard accepted and lived in a house in Houston she shared with another woman.

Jeannette Piccard spoke to the scientific community and to the public at NASA about the space program from 1964 to 1970, when Project Apollo was created and Apollo 11 made the first crewed Moon landing in 1969.

In 1971, one year after the Episcopal Church admitted female deacons, Jeannette Piccard was ordained a deacon and, on July 29,1974, at age 79, under controversial circumstances, she was ordained a priest.

Jeannette Piccard was the first of the eleven women ordained because she was the oldest and she was fulfilling a lifelong dream.

Jeannette Piccard served as a deacon or irregular at St Philip's Episcopal Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1975 to 1977.

Jeannette Piccard had the image of the street-wise old lady.

Jeannette Piccard died of cancer on May 17,1981, at the Masonic Memorial Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, aged 86.

Jeannette Piccard received the Robert R Gilruth Award in 1970 from the North Galveston County Chamber of Commerce.

Jeannette Piccard was posthumously inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1998, and she and her husband were nominated to the FAI Ballooning Commission Hall of Fame.