Meet the Sky Girls!
On this day in 1930, Ellen Church, a registered nurse, became the first airline stewardess in America - on an Oakland to Chicago flight operated by Boeing Air Transport, which later became United Airlines. A woman of real accomplishment, she was a certified pilot and wanted to fly commercially, but Boeing was having none of it. BAT made her chief stewardess and she recruited seven other “Sky Girls”, as BAT called them, under her command. They had to be nurses, "single, younger than 25 years old; weigh less than 115 pounds [52 kg]; and be shorter than 5 feet, 4 inches tall [1.63 m]”. Ellen was an accomplished leader, but why BAT wanted her on their flights in the first place was the real surprise.