Among her many other achievements, she was the first woman to parachute from an airplane, which she is sometimes credited with accomplishing over Los Angeles on June 21, 1913, with aviator Glenn L. Martin as the pilot. However, she previously made at least two jumps from Martin’s plane during an exhibition in Chicago’s Grant Park the week of September 16, 1912. These early jumps included a well-publicized jump on January 9, 1914, from a plane built and piloted by Martin, 1,000 feet over Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

In 1914, she demonstrated parachutes to the U.S. Army, which at the time had a small, hazardous fleet of aircraft. The Army, reluctant at first to adopt the parachute, watched as Tiny Broadwick dropped from the sky. On her fourth demonstration jump, the static line became entangled in the tail assembly of the aircraft; Broadwick was able to retrieve a knife from her suit and cut the line. Still holding the line, she was able to pull it and open the parachute after falling free from the empennage. Using this knowledge, on her next jump she cut the static line short and did not attach it to the plane. Instead, she deployed her chute manually by pulling the shortened, unattached line while in free-fall in what may have been the first planned free-fall jump from an airplane. This demonstrated that pilots could safely escape aircraft by using what was later called a ripcord.

Also in 1914, Broadwick jumped into Lake Michigan, becoming the first woman to parachute into a body of water.

By the time of her retirement from jumping in 1922 due to problems with her ankles, she was said to have made over 1,100 jumps. Although she was not a pilot, she was one of the few female members of the Early Birds of Aviation.

The photographer recalled: “Prince literally rolled up to me on his home tennis court at Galpin Blvd., Chanhassen, MN and said: ‘Let’s shoot some action shots!’ I have to admit, at first, I didn’t think he could pull this outfit off! But as usual, he did with poise, grace, and humor!”

These young workers, some barely more than children, were part of the labor force that powered America’s industrial boom. Lewis Wickes Hine, a pioneering social reform photographer, used images like this to expose the harsh realities of child labor and advocate for change. His powerful documentation played a crucial role in sparking labor reforms that eventually led to child labor laws across the United States.

At that time, American law-makers weren’t completely apathetic towards this situation, and many U.S. states had already passed laws that regulated the employment of children in industrial settings. Most companies however chose to ignore these laws. It wasn’t an uncommon notion that hiring these children would help out the poorer families in the state.

While Lewis Hine was documenting these child laborers, many employers passed them off as at least 16 years old. In reality, children as young as eight were already hired for different jobs.

Mr. Hine studied sociology and later on became a teacher. He encouraged his students to use photography as a tool for their education. Later on, he realized that photojournalism was his true calling.

He first documented the arrival of immigrants in Ellis Island in 1904. He continued his photography by following these immigrants into their crowded tenements. It wouldn’t be long after starting on this path that his work led him to the working conditions of the poor, including children.

His groundbreaking work on child labor began in 1908 at the invitation of the National Child Labor Committee. They believed that child labor would only provide so much income for the families in the short run and wouldn’t lead them out of poverty in the future. Instead, a proper education was the true way for improving the lives of the children.

Mr. Hine set out to different factories, mines, and plants in many states to document these child workers. It is truly a testament to his skill and determination that he was able to capture so many moving images at the risk of his own life; the presence of a photographer with the aim of exposing these exploited children would have been an unwelcome prospect for these companies, to say the least.

Hine’s photographs put hundreds of faces to the names of these child laborers that the middle and upper classes had only heard about in passing. His invaluable work paid off as the NCLC successfully lobbied for federal laws to protect the children, although it would be many years before true change would come. 

Today, Lewis Hine is remembered for helping change the working conditions of everyone across America through his unflinching photographs. Then NCLC honors his name through the Lewis Hine Awards which recognizes those who have helped children and the youth.

This story has been told in many ways, where locations of where the airfield was and how it was bombed being different but the gist is this:

Could this story be true? The use of decoy airfields and other make-believe facilities during the Second World War was no legend at all.

Both sides tried to fool each other and there is no doubt that the Germans built wooden airplanes and sometimes complete airfields to keep the allies away from the actual airfields. They also painted bomb damage on existing airfields to make them look unusable and spare them from further bombing.