36 Facts About Marie Marvingt

Marie Marvingt was a French athlete, mountaineer, aviator, and journalist.

Marie Marvingt 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.

Marie Marvingt was the first woman to climb many of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps.

Marie Marvingt was a record-breaking balloonist, an aviator, and during World War I she became the first female combat pilot.

Marie Marvingt was 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.

Marie Marvingt's father was Felix Constant Marvingt, a senior postmaster, and her mother was Elisabeth Brusquin.

When Marie Marvingt's mother died in 1889, the fourteen-year-old found herself in charge of the household, and the family moved to Nancy, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Felix Marie Marvingt was a local billiards and swimming champion, and a dedicated sports fan.

Marie Marvingt grew to enjoy many other sports: mountaineering, riflery, gymnastics, horseriding, fencing, tennis, skiing, luging, ice skating, boxing, martial arts, golf, hockey, and football.

Marie Marvingt had learned a number of circus skills, and obtained a driver's license by 1899.

Marie Marvingt became a world-class athlete who won numerous prizes in swimming, fencing, riflery, shooting, skiing, speed skating, luge and bobsledding.

Marie Marvingt was a skilled mountaineer and between 1903 and 1910 she became the first woman to climb most of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps including the Aiguille des Grands Charmoz and the Grepon Pass from Chamonix in a single day.

Marie Marvingt dominated the 1908 to 1910 winter sports seasons at Chamonix, Gerardmer, and Ballon d'Alsace, where she achieved first place on more than 20 occasions.

Marie Marvingt enjoyed cycling and rode from Nancy, France, to Naples, Italy, to see a volcanic eruption.

Marie Marvingt chose to cycle the course anyway, riding some distance behind the entrants.

Marie Marvingt successfully completed the grueling ride, a feat which only 36 of 114 male riders had managed that year.

Marie Marvingt ascended as a passenger in a free-flight balloon for the first time in 1901.

On 24 September 1909, she made her first solo flight as a balloon pilot, and on 26 October 1909, Marie Marvingt became the first woman to pilot a balloon across the North Sea from Europe to England.

Marie Marvingt won prizes for ballooning in 1909,1910, and 1911.

Marie Marvingt earned her balloon pilot's license from the Stella Aero Club in 1910, the second woman to do so.

In September 1909, Marie Marvingt experienced her first flight as a passenger in an aeroplane piloted by Roger Sommer.

Marie Marvingt piloted, soloed, and passed her license requirements on the difficult-to-fly Antoinette, the first woman to do so.

Marie Marvingt received a pilot's license from the Aero-Club de France on 8 November 1910.

Marie Marvingt flew in a number of air meets, bombed a German airbase twice as an unofficial pilot in World War I, flew on reconnaissance missions in the "pacification" of North Africa, and was the only woman to hold four pilot's licenses simultaneously: balloon, airplane, hydroplane, helicopter.

On 27 November 1910, Marie Marvingt set the world's first aviation records for women in time aloft and distance flown.

Marie Marvingt made a last attempt to win the Cup on 30 December 1910 but mechanical failure forced her to land short of her goal.

Marie Marvingt proposed the development of fixed-wing aircraft as air ambulances to the French government as early as 1910.

Marie Marvingt devoted the remainder of her long life to the concept of aeromedical evacuation, giving more than 3,000 conferences and seminars on the subject on at least four continents.

Marie Marvingt was co-founder of the French organization Les Amies De L'Aviation Sanitaire and was one of the organizers behind the success of the First International Congress on Medical Aviation in 1929.

Marie Marvingt's schemes caught the imagination of the young women of her country and at the start of WW II, this escalated.

Marie Marvingt served as a Red Cross surgical nurse, as a war correspondent on the Italian front, and as a probable gatherer of information for military authorities.

In 1915 Marie 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 Croix de guerre for her aerial bombing of a German military base in Metz.

Marie Marvingt ran a ski school in the desert, teaching people to ski on sand dunes.

Marie Marvingt fought in the Resistance, for which she was given a medal with a star.

Marie Marvingt died on 14 December 1963, aged 88, in Laxou, a small commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in northeastern France.

Marie Marvingt was highly decorated, with more than 34 decorations, awards, and medals.