1. Louise Thaden was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Historical Society's Hall of Fame in 1980.
18 Facts About Louise Thaden
1. 2.
Louise Thaden's salary included free pilot's lessons, and she earned her pilot's certificate in 1928.
3.
Louise Thaden was the first female pilot to be licensed by the state of Ohio.
4.
McPhetridge met Herbert von Louise Thaden, who was a United States Army Signal Corps pilot and engineer who worked on developing the first American all-metal aircraft, the Louise Thaden T-2.
5.
McPhetridge and von Louise Thaden were married in San Francisco on June 19,1928.
6.
Louise Thaden rapidly became a major figure in the aviation world and set many world performance records and won many major flying events.
7.
Louise Thaden set the women's altitude record in December 1928 with a mark of 20,260 feet.
8.
Louise Thaden was a friend and rival of pioneer aviators Amelia Earhart, Pancho Barnes, Opal Kunz, and Blanche Noyes.
9.
Louise Thaden defeated her colleagues in the first Women's Air Derby, known as the Powder Puff Derby, in 1929.
10.
In 1930, Louise Thaden went to work as the public relations director of Pittsburgh Aviation Industries and became the director of the Women's Division of the Penn School of Aeronautics.
11.
Louise Thaden turned down the presidency of the organization but served as the treasurer and vice-president.
12.
In 1935, Phoebe Omlie, another pioneer female aviator, asked Louise Thaden to become a field representative for the National Air Marking Program.
13.
In 1936, Louise Thaden won the Bendix Trophy Race in the first year women were allowed access to compete against men.
14.
Louise Thaden set a new world record of 14 hours, 55 minutes from New York City to Los Angeles, California.
15.
Louise Thaden teamed up with Frances Marsalis and set another endurance record by flying a Curtiss Thrush high-wing monoplane over Long Island, New York for 196 hours.
16.
Louise Thaden worked for a time with the Bureau of Air Commerce to promote the creation of airfields.
17.
Louise Thaden wrote her memoirs, High, Wide and Frightened soon after her retirement.
18.
Louise Thaden died of a heart attack at High Point, North Carolina on November 9,1979.