Edith Maud Cook
Pilot
Hot air balloon operator and parachutist who became the first Englishwoman to fly a plane. During her ten-year aviation career, she made several hundred parachute jumps.
She nearly perished during a 1908 parachute leap. She perished two years later in a similar accident near Coventry, England.
During her aviation career, she was known by numerous pseudonyms, including Viola Spencer-Kavanagh and Viola Fleet.
She grew up in Ipswich, Suffolk, England as the daughter of Mary Ann Baker and James Wells Cook.
She was a flying pupil of French aviator Louis Bleriot.