Wonder Woman of the Week: "Tiny" Broadwick

Nearly every person in the world with a bucket list has skydiving on their agenda, but jumping out of an airplane and surviving would not be possible today without this week's Wonder Woman. Georgian Ann Thompson Broadwick was a pioneer in early parachute technology as an accomplished pilot and parachutist making death-defying tests on parachute technology and development that paved the way for life-saving technology. Born in 1893, Broadwick entered a new age of incredible technology- including witnessing the birth of aviation. She also had a difficult childhood. Born at just three pounds, Georgia earned the nickname "Tiny" to a large family and married extremely young at only twelve years old. At thirteen, she had her first child. Her husband left her soon after, and- by fifteen- Thompson was a single mother working in a cotton mill to pay the bills. Fate however, gave Thompson an avenue for a new life. After watching a hot air ballooner drop out of his balloon with a prototype parachute, the young Thompson immediately knew what she wanted to do with her life.

Tiny Thompson began traveling with the hot air balloon daredevil Charles Broadwick and sent her daughter to her parents while testing early parachute technology. Eventually, Thompson married Broadwick and started jumping out of airplanes as the first test subject for parachute jumps out of airplanes- credited in 1913 over the skies of Los Angeles. In 1914, Broadwick tested parachutes for the US Army and the technology would later be used to save countless lives of US Army pilots in the First World War. Broadwick married two more times (once in 1912 and once in 1914) after continued difficulty in her early life before retiring from aeronautics in 1922. Broadwick died in 1978 after 1100 successful parachute jumps