On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby took off from Dover in a 50-horsepower Blériot XI monoplane. She had never flown the model before. She had never flown over water. She had never used a compass until that morning, when British pilot Gustav Hamel taught her how. The English Channel was blanketed in fog. She climbed to 6,000 feet, navigating by compass and watch alone. For an hour she flew in cold gray mist, the engine backfiring from flooded carburetors, a hot water bottle clutched against her wool satin flying suit. Then the fog broke, and she saw France below. She spiraled down to a beach landing at Hardelot-Plage after one hour and nine minutes. She was the first woman to fly the Channel solo. The world barely noticed. The Titanic had struck an iceberg two days earlier, and every newspaper in the world was focused on the sinking. Quimby was not finished: she had a contract to fly the U.S. mail from Boston to New York. But on July 1, 1912, at a Boston air meet, her Blériot pitched over in a gust and she fell to her death. She had been a licensed pilot for less than eleven months. She had changed everything in that time.