Episode 62 of “Yesterday’s Newsreel” provided viewers “television highlights of the news of yesteryear” by providing vintage clips of famous people and events from the first half of the 20th century. This episode opens with a look at Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw (mark 00:42). We see assorted footage from different periods of his life, including a lengthy speech beginning at mark 01:20. Detail regarding the sinking of a captured German ship by the US Navy in 1921 (as part of a training exercise) is detailed starting at mark 03:35, followed by a look at the “Personalities” of 1929 (mark 04:22) including US Ambassador Charles Dawes (who had just completed a term as vice president under Calvin Coolidge) during a visit to England, and Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish member of a United Nations mediating team, his wife Estelle Bernadotte, and their son Gustav, as well as New York City Roman Catholic Cardinal Patrick Joseph Hayes as he prepared for a trip to the Vatican. Come mark 05:38, the film recounts a massive late 1920s fire in Newark, New Jersey that destroyed an entire city block as we see extensive footage of the flames and their aftermath, while at mark 06:42 there is a more upbeat recollection of the marriage of 105 couples in Montreal. “Susquehanna Salvage” (mark 07:57) takes a trip down the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania as it is dredged for water traffic, and “Aviation” visits that subject in 1930 and tells us about aviation pioneer Ruth Nichols. The film concludes with looks at fashion of the day in 1900, golfer Bobby Jones’ success on the green in the 1926 US Open.
Ruth Rowland Nichols (February 23, 1901 – September 25, 1960) was an American aviation pioneer. She was the only woman yet to hold simultaneous world records for speed, altitude, and distance for a female pilot. Due to her socialite upbringing and aristocratic family background, Nichols became known in the press as the “Flying Debutante”, a name she hated. Nichols was then hired as a sales manager for Fairchild Aviation Corporation. In 1929, she was a founding member, with Amelia Earhart and others, of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of licensed women pilots. In August 1929, she and Earhart were among 20 competitors in the Women’s Air Derby (also known as the “Powder Puff Derby”), the first official women-only air race in the United States. They departed from Santa Monica, California, on 18 August for Cleveland, Ohio. Nichols crashed, while Earhart finished third in the heavy class.
During the 1930s, while working for Fairchild and other aviation companies, Nichols made several record-setting flights, most of them in a Lockheed Electra on open loan from millionaire industrialist Powel Crosley, Jr. In 1930, she beat Charles Lindbergh’s record time for a cross-country flight, completing the trip in 13 hours, 21 minutes. In March, 1931, she set the women’s world altitude record of 28,743 feet (8760.9 m). In April 1931, she set the women’s world speed record of 210.7 miles per hour (339.1 km/h). In June, 1931, she attempted to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, but crashed in New Brunswick[2] and was severely injured. Following her recovery, in October, 1931, she set the women’s distance record with a flight from Oakland, California to Louisville, Kentucky, 1,977 miles (3182 km).
On 14 February 1932, Nichols set a new world altitude record of 19,928 feet for diesel-powered aircraft at Floyd Bennett Field, NY while flying in a Lockheed Vega. On 3 November, an attempt at breaking Earhart’s transcontinental record failed when Nichol’s aircraft skidded off the runway at Floyd Bennett Field while taxiing, went into a ground loop, and was badly damaged as the port wing dug in, although the pilot escaped injury. On 29 December, Nichols became the first woman pilot of a commercial passenger airline, flying for New York and New England Airways.
On 21 October 1935, Nichols was critically injured in a crash during a private flight in Troy, New York. The flight was to be an airborne wedding for two couples over New York City, but the plane, a Curtiss Condor, registration NC725K, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing the pilot. Nichols received a broken left wrist, ankle and nose, contusions, burns and “possible internal injuries”, according to newspaper accounts of the crash. She was unable to fly for nearly a year after. When she returned to flying, Nichols went to work for the Emergency Peace Campaign, a Quaker organization that sought to promote peaceful resolution to international conflicts then brewing. In 1939, she headed Relief Wings, a civilian air service that performed emergency relief flights and assisted the Civil Air Patrol during World War II. Nichols would eventually attain the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Civil Air Patrol.
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