Who was the first woman to fly across the Channel?
8,407
The number of silver coins in the Dunscore Hoard, mostly from the 13th and 14th centuries, found by metal detectorists in Scotland in 2022.
SHORT ANSWER Harriet Quimby flew into the history books, but the newspapers of the day were somewhat preoccupied
LONG ANSWER Louis Bleriot earned the plaudits, and a £1,000 prize, as the first aeroplane pilot to fly across the Channel, but it would be a little under three years from his 1909 flight before a woman achieved the same feat. The Michigan-born Harriet Quimby had got used to picking up firsts – she had been the first American woman to receive a pilot's licence – so a Channel crossing was the next obvious challenge.
There were a few concerns: she had never flown long-distance over the sea or even used a compass before. What's more, when she took off at 5.35am on the morning of 16 April 1912, it was shaping up to be a foggy and windy day, and so cold that she wore several coats and sat with a hot water bottle on her lap. Yet Quimby made it from Dover to Hardelot, choosing to land on a beach so as not to ruin any farmer's field, in under an hour.
Sadly, her achievement garnered underwhelming press attention since newspapers were somewhat preoccupied: had sunk a night earlier. More sadly, like many who caught the aviation bug in its early days, Quimby was not destined for
