On the evening of 4 September 1936 a turquoise-and-silver monoplane left an airfield in Oxfordshire and set out for the Atlantic. Darkness lay ahead. So did thousands of miles of open water, brutal headwinds and the chance that the aircraft would never return. Beryl Markham, 33, was at the controls alone in the cockpit, trying for a trip no woman had yet achieved. She was going to New York. Her course was westward across an ocean with prevailing winds that made the crossing particularly unforgiving. Markham fought the elements for about 20 hours. Then, off the coast of Canada, ice clogged the airplane's fuel-tank vents, starving the engine, a plane crashed in a peat bog on Cape Breton Island, states Afterburner magazine report. Markham lived, though she was cut across the forehead. She, too, had made history in aviation.
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