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One of the pioneering parachutists of the 20th century, and inventor of the ripcord mechanism, was a 5ft woman by the name of Tiny Broadwick.
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Georgia Ann "Tiny" Thompson was born April 8, 1893, in Oxford, North Carolina. She weighed just 3lbs at birth, and grew to just 5feet and 85lbs so was given the nickname Tiny.
Tiny married at 12, had a daughter at 13, and at 15 was a single mother working in a cotton mill.
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Tiny married at 12, had a daughter at 13, and at 15 was a single mother working in a cotton mill.
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One day Tiny saw the travelling troupe Charles Broadwick's World Famous Aeronauts perform parachute jumps from a hot air balloon and decided to join them. She took Broadwick's surname from then on and was billed as The Doll Girl.
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Tiny began performing skydives and parachute stunts from the balloon. She became the first woman to parachute from an airplane at Chicago's Grant Park in Sep, 1912, from the plane of Glenn L. Martin. The official credited jump occured on June 21, 1913, over Los Angeles.
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Tiny also became the first woman to make a parachute jump into water.
In 1914 she demonstrated parachutes to the U.S Army. The army at the time had a fleet of small, hazard-prone aircraft. Reluctant at first, they watched Tiny jump from the planes and drop from the sky.
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In 1914 she demonstrated parachutes to the U.S Army. The army at the time had a fleet of small, hazard-prone aircraft. Reluctant at first, they watched Tiny jump from the planes and drop from the sky.
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On one of her demo jumps, the static line became entangled in the tail assembly of the aircraft & she had to cut the static line to free herself.
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On her next jump, she cut the static line beforehand & deployed her parachute manually, thus becoming the first person to jump free-fall, and inventing the ripcord mechanism. This demonstrated that pilots could escape their aircrafts by using parachutes equipped with a ripcord
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In her career, Tiny is said to have made over 1,100 jumps. She retired in 1922 and passed away in 1978.
#tinybroadwick #parachutist #doitlikeagirl
#tinybroadwick #parachutist #doitlikeagirl
