This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mayo.

Let's just remember this time. Let's just remember a woman named Harriet Quimby.

Born in 1874 in Arcadia, Michigan, her parents were farmers and the farm failed.

Maybe it was their fault, I don't know. But they moved to San Francisco when Harriet's

in her early 20s and unmarried and living with her parents because that's what she did then.

And let's remember that she wanted to see the world, wanted to live a bigger life.

Bigger than the failed farm, bigger than the room in her parents' house.

And let's remember that it's 1900 or 1901 or something like that. And just about the

only thing that she could do that might do that that might open up that world.

The only thing that was open to her in 1910 something was to write. Women, some women were

allowed to do that. Even if what Harriet Quimby could write was limited, was corseted.

But writing let her travel. And it got her to New York. And she took pictures and wrote for

a national magazine. And she wrote screenplays, tales of adventures that she herself would never have.

But let's remember an October day out on Long Island. Cool autumn light, breeze off the bay.

It bellmarked park where the horses ran, where they run still. But on this day, the field was

cleared and the white rails were pulled up and the infield was turned into a runway for the

second international aviation exhibition. Plains, wooden frames and propellers, bicycle tires,

rows and banked, and made slow, low circles over the gathered thousands.

Let's remember that this is a handful of years after the Wright Brothers flew for 12 seconds

above the dunes at Kitty Hawk. And the people below were craning and cheering, simply because they

got to watch men fly. And Harriet Quimby was with them on the ground. And she went home to file

her story. And then she learned to fly. The next year, Harriet Quimby rose 150 feet in the air,

...