Lilian Bland Born - Sept. 28, 1878

Lilian Bland was born on this day in 1878. Learn more in the July 13, 2016 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and at September
twenty eight. Lillian Bland, who was one of the women

(00:24):
pioneers in the world of aviation, was born on this
day in eight seventy eight. She was born in Kent,
although her family was Irish, and she went to live
with an aunt in Ireland when she was twenty two
after her mother became seriously ill and moved to the
Mediterranean area for the sake of her health. Bland was
a disappointment to her aunt that she moved in with.

(00:44):
Though she didn't act like a lady. She wore trousers
and she smoked and hunted and fished. She was an
excellent shot and one of the first women in Ireland
to apply to be a jockey. As far as her profession,
she was a journalist and a photographer and in nineteen
and she got a postcard from her uncle that depicted
French pilot Louis Blrio's flight over the English Channel and

(01:07):
she was entranced. Bland decided that she wanted to fly,
and not only did she want to fly, but she
wanted to build her own plane, so she did. In
October of nine she went to Blackpool to attend the
first British Aviation Meeting and she came home with all
kinds of notes and ideas for her aircraft. She started

(01:28):
out making small gliders as a proof of concept and
what she decided to move on to a full sized model.
She chose bamboo, ash, spruce and elm as her materials.
Because she was a journalist standard photographer, she documented the
entire process and published articles about it. Lillian Bland named
her aircraft the Mayfly, as in it may fly or

(01:51):
it may not fly. She took it up to Carnamoni
Hill to see if it would. This wasn't a powered
flight yet She was operating her design as a glider
to see a that could stay aloft, which it did,
albeit with some bumps. She made adjustments and when she
was satisfied she ordered an engine and then went to
England to pick it up herself. Because she got tired

(02:11):
of waiting for it, she finally made her first attempt
at powered flight in August of nine at the Deer
Park at Randallstown. This was short and bumpy, and she
had to get off the ground quickly because a cantankerous
bull lived in the same field that she was using
as an airstrip. She kept tankering with this plane and
finally it was able to lift to an altitude of

(02:31):
thirty feet and fly for about a quarter of a mile.
She was so happy with her successful flights in the
Mayfly that she decided to start her own aircraft company.
She sold gliders and biplanes in standard and racing models.
Her family, though, was really worried about her safety with
this whole flying fixation. They bribed her to quit by

(02:54):
offering her a new model T if she did, and
she took them up on that offer. This was not
a matter of her just giving up a lifelong dream
of having her own airplane company, though she recognized the
Mayfly hopped more than it really flew, and she also
realized that flying was an incredibly expensive hobby. Plus, once

(03:14):
she drove that model T, she realized that driving offered
a lot of the same satisfaction to her that flying did.
In fact, she became so enamored of driving that she
decided she would sell cars. Her family didn't like this either.
They thought it was unladylike, so they arranged a marriage
for her to her cousin, Charles Loftus Bland. They did

(03:36):
get married. They seem to have been pretty happily married,
although their marriage deteriorated after their daughter died of tetanus
at the age of sixteen. Lillian Bland died on May
eleven one, at the age of two. You can learn
more about Lilian Bland on the July sixteen episode of
Stuff You Miss in History Class. You can subscribe to

(03:58):
This Day in History Class US on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
and wherever else you get your podcasts. Tomorrow, you can
tune in for a household name and a mysterious death.