Amelia Earhart is undoubtedly the best-known female aviator. A record-setting pilot and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, she presumably died in 1937 in the Pacific while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.

But before Amelia Earhart, there was Neta Snook, who taught Earhart how to fly. And before Snook there was Bessie Coleman, the world’s first black woman to earn a pilot’s license.

And before those three women, there was Michigan-born Harriet Quimby. One hundred and fourteen years ago — on Aug. 1, 1911 — she made history. It was not yet eight years after the Wright Brothers flew for the first time.

A fountain in Burbank, Calif., serves as a shrine to Quimby. The fountain’s plaque reads as follows:

“Harriet Quimby became the first licensed female pilot in America on

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