Rank #353 in NON FICTION
As a salute to all the many women who fought in World War II, at home, in secret, in the service, we give you this collection of stories of real-life women. Like Agent Peggy Carter, too often their sacrifice and service was...
Elsie MacGill was a child of firsts. Her grandmother fought for a woman's right to vote, while her mother sat as British Columbia's first female judge. Elsie MacGill was the first Canadian woman to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering (University of Toronto 1927), the first woman in North America with an advanced degree in aeronautics (University of Michigan 1929), and the world's first woman to become an aircraft designer.
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Contracting polio just before her graduation, MacGill was told that she would probably spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She refused to accept that possibility, however, and learned to walk supported by two strong metal canes. She wrote magazine articles about aircraft and flying to help finance her doctoral studies at MIT in Cambridge.
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She then lead an effort to build Hawker Hurricane fighter planes for the Allies in the Second World War. Leading a workforce of 4,500 people, she turned the Canadian Car and Foundry Company (CanCar) from a boxcar factory to a producer of Hurricane fighters, churning out three or four per week.
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One out of 10 such planes would come from her company by the war's end, and she was dubbed "Queen of the Hurricanes." Her efforts inspired a comic book of the same name.
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BIOGRAPHY
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